OBSERVATIONS UPON THE WAVERLY GROUP. 497 



In this paper they are described as "argillaceous sandstone rocks, 

 Very fine grained," and the fossil remains are imperfectly illustrated by 

 Dr. S. G. Morton. Although C. Briggs, in his paper in the First Annual 

 Report of the Ohio Geological Survey, 1838, applied the name Waverly 

 Sandstone series to these rocks, they were for a long time designated 

 simply "Fine grained sandstone series." 



When Professor Hall, in 1842, announced the results of his extended 

 western explorations (American Journ. Science, XLIII, etc.), he regarded 

 all the strata lying between the black (Ohio) shale and the mill-stone 

 grit as equivalent to the Chemung and Portage. 



The black shale was considered as the only representative of the 

 Marcellus shale of New York, the Hamilton group, and Genessee slate. 

 The equivalence of the Ohio "fine-grained sandstone series" with the 

 Chemung was several times reiterated by Professor Hall and Professors 

 White and Whitfield, and seems not to have been called in question, 

 although evidence was fast accumulating that the equivalent horizons in 

 Missouri, Iowa and Michigan have a Carboniferous habitus, until 1862, 

 when Professor Hall remarks that "the Waverly sandstone group of the 

 Ohio reports, at one time regarded by me as entirely equivalent to the 

 Portage and Chemung groups may, in its upper members, constitute a 

 distinct group, though we do not know any line of demarkation between 

 them 1 ." More direct evidence of the position of the Waverly was afforded 

 by the descriptions of Crinoids from Richfield, O., in 1863. The list, con- 

 taining seventeen species, was reissued by Professor Hall in 1865 2 , and 

 closes with .the statement that "Left to the evidence afforded alone by 

 the collection, and the means of comparison at present possessed, I should 

 infer that the geological position of these beds is between the Hamilton 

 group and the lower Carboniferous beds; while the occurrence of a single 

 species identical with a species in the middle of the Chemung group 

 will ally them more nearly with the fauna of the Hamilton group than 

 with that of the Carboniferous period." With respect to this statement it 

 may be added that in the locality mentioned there is exposed almost 

 solely a small range of very fossiliferous shale from the lower third of the 

 Waverly in which we nowhere find the typical Waverly faunal habitus. 

 The upper portion of the series is wholly absent and only here and there 

 are remnants of the middle Waverly ( Kinderhook) to be found and these 

 often in abnormal proximity to the lower series. The next lower fossil- 

 iferous horizon is that of the Bedford shale, which, as I have shown, has 

 a large series of forms identical with or similar to Hamilton species. It 

 thus appears that inasmuch as, faunally at least, these beds lie between 

 Kinderhook and Hamilton horizons, it is not unnatural that the Crinoids 

 should have resemblances to Devonian types. At the same time the 

 fact, now abundantly proven, that true Chemung (Erie) beds lie below 



1 Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, vol. VII. 

 'XVII Rep. N. Y. Regents. 1865. 



32 G. O. 



