INTRODUCTION. 243 



attempt to fix the age of the granites of Central Texas. But, although Rce- 

 mer has nowhere distinctly stated this, one may infer that he intended to 

 classify them all as pre-Paleozoic, for at the date of his writing silence upon 

 this point was nearly equivalent to such a designation. 



In 1858, by act of the Legislature of Texas, the first Geological Survey 

 was authorized and placed under the direction of Dr. Benjamin F. Shumard, 

 as State Geologist. A field party, headed by himself, covered Burnet 

 County in 1859, but no work was done elsewhere within the limits set for 

 the present report. Dr. Shumard must, however, have obtained in some 

 way a very good outline knowledge of the geology of the great Central area; 

 for, under the date of June 12, 1859, he wrote to the corresponding secretary of 

 the St. Louis Academy of Science an announcement of the discovery of "an 

 extensive development of Lower Silurian rocks, equivalent to the Potsdam 

 sandstone and Calciferous sandrock of the New York system;" referring to 

 the possible existence of u a few feet (not exceeding 50) of Devonian rocks" 

 between the Carboniferous and Cretaceous strata. He concludes that "the 

 Trenton limestone, Hudson River group, all the Upper Silurian, nearly all 

 the Devonian, and the Chemung, appear to be entirely wanting, the Carbon- 

 iferous strata resting directly upon the oldest Paleozoic. But the final result 

 must await a more careful examination of the fossils than I have as yet had 

 time to make of them." * 



In 1861 Dr. Shumard also published a paper which contains very valuable 

 notes, including several sections in detail, f Undoubtedly a part of the field 

 work upon which these statements were based was done in 1860, and it is 

 very probable that unfortunate events which occurred about that time have 

 deprived this able geologist of much credit properly due him for discoveries 

 then made. It is a pleasing task to aid a little in doing tardy justice to one 

 so thorough and accurate in observation and deduction. The results of the 

 first, and almost the only reliable, stratigraphic work heretofore performed m 

 this region appear in the fragmentary papers of B. F. Shumard. In the 

 writings referred to, J after some discussion of Reamer's paleontologic data, 

 he remarks: 



We have no further account of the Primordial rocks of Texas until 1859, when the pres- 

 ent writer published a notice of their discovery in Burnet County (Trans. Acad. ScL, St. 

 Louis, vol. I, p. 6*7 3), in which their parallelism with the Potsdam sandstone and Calcifer- 

 ous sand group of Iowa, "Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and the magnesian limestone series (in 

 part) of Missouri, was indicated. 



* This letter was published in Transactions Academy of Science, St. Louis, vol. I, No. 4, 

 pp. 672, 673; 1860. 



f The Primordial Zone of Texas, with Descriptions of New Fossils. By B. P. Shumard. 

 American Journal of Science (second series), vol, XXXII, 1861, pp. 211-221. 



%Loc. cit, p. 214. 



