Chattanooga Shale in Kentucky. 131 



Tennessee the same conodont fauna which characterizes this 

 formation at Chattanooga, the type locality. In view of this 

 discovery of the same fauna on both sides of the barrier, which 

 some geologists have assumed to separate the black shale of 

 eastern and middle Tennessee, the claim of the distinctness 

 of the shale in the two areas appears to be no longer tenable 

 Since the Devonian age of the east Tennessee black shale has 

 already been conceded, the finding of a conodont fauna which 

 shows the essential faunal unity of the shale in both areas car- 

 ries with it the evidence of the Devonian age of both. 



With the second proposition the writer does not take issue 

 except to state that it is probable that the Chattanooga shale 

 in Tennessee will be shown to be the equivalent, not only of 

 the Cleveland shale, but of much of the remainder of the Ohio 

 shale as well. 



With the third proposition I am compelled to disagree. Dr. 

 Bassler does not claim to present any new evidence for refer- 

 ring the Cleveland shale to the Carboniferous but briefly 

 restates* the evidence which led Newberry to refer these beds 

 to the Waverly in 1874. It seems probable that Bassler was 

 not aware of the excellent reasons which have led the authors 

 of the official reports of the Ohio Survey since Professor New- 

 berry's time to discard the evidence brought forward by 

 Newberry and place the Cleveland shale in the Devonian. In 

 the space here available it is only possible to refer briefly to 

 the stratigraphic mistakes made by Newberry which must 

 throw grave doubt upon any evidence which he presented for 

 the Carboniferous age of the Cleveland shale. Prof. Prosserf 

 has fully discussed some of these in his paper on the Sunbury 

 shale, to which the reader is referred. It is necessary for the 

 reader to recall in this connection ■ that in northern Ohio the 

 Cleveland shale, which is the highest member of the Ohio shale, 

 is separated from a Carboniferous black shale above it, called 

 the Sunbury, and from a Devonian black shale below, called 

 the Huron, by drab shale and sandstone formations of variable 

 thicknesses. It was easy in the early reconnoissance work 

 of the Ohio Survey to confuse these three black shales. We 

 have Newberry's own statement that he did confuse the Cleve- 

 land and Huron shales in northern Ohio. Concerning this 

 he wrote : " This dip misled us and the thinning of the Erie 

 shale, bringing the Cleveland down near to the Huron, caused 

 these two to be confounded.'^ It appears that this confusion 

 of the upper and lower shales was not detected by Newberry 

 until 1886, or twelve years after he announced the discovery 



*Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, vol. xli, p. 213, 1911. 



+ The Sunbury Shale of Ohio, Jour, of Geology, vol. x, pp. 262-312, 1902. 



% Moii. U. S. Gebl. Survey, xvi, p. 127, 1889. 



