OBSERVATIONS UPON THE WAVERLY GROUP. 499 



a very elaborate historical and paleontological review of the whole ques- 

 tion, seeking to effect a parallelism between the formations of all the 

 western states and New York. To this paper the reader is referred for 

 the materials for a critical study of the question. The second part 

 of this paper appeared in May, 1870, and contained a list of over 400 spe- 

 cies from rocks supposed to be contemporaneous with the Waverly or Mar- 

 shall group. Of these 139 were from Ohio and 160 from Iowa, and some- 

 thing over 100 from Michigan. At least 50 species in the Iowa list are 

 also found in Ohio and 27 found in Michigan were also found in Ohio. 

 It should be noticed that Professor Winchell distinctly separates the Mar- 

 shall from the chocolate shales of the lower Waverly. It is necessary 

 to apply a name to the exclusion of the "Chocolate Series" of Ohio, un- 

 derlying the fossiliferous sandstones of the Waverly series. 



He did not discover that the Cuyahoga shale, and indeed the entire 

 exposed Waverly of the northern counties of Ohio, belongs to this lower 

 shaly series, nor that, instead of being unfossiliferous, it is locally one 

 of the most richly fossiliferous horizons of the State. Had he discovered 

 that the strata upon whose fauna Professor Hall pronounced the Wa- 

 verly of Chemung age belonged in the "chocolate series" which he ex- 

 pressly relegated to the Devonian, we had been spared a long and fa- 

 tiguing discussion. 



It still remains to note that the upper and sandy portions are by no 

 means as homogeneous as supposed hitherto. All of the attempts to as- 

 sign the Waverly to its proper position in the series have been wrecked 

 on the fatal fact that the collections have been made indiscriminately 

 without regard to altitude in the series. This is due to the lithological 

 and physical similarity of the rocks from top to bottom and to the very 

 fickle and irregular character of the conglomerates. 



It may be added that the extent to which the upper surface of the 

 Waverly has been eroded varies greatly in various parts of the State so 

 that the distance beneath the Millstone grit is absolutely no guide in 

 those portions where the entire series is represented, and much less so 

 where the fluctuations in level have superposed the grit on the project- 

 ing base of the Waverly series. In no other way can the Waverly prob- 

 lem be understood than by considering the slow but extensive oscillatory 

 or rocking movements of the earth's crust which have shifted the depos- 

 iting waters back and forth, and even caused two adjacent basins or re- 

 gions to play hide and seek with each other. 



Of the work of the Ohio Geological Survey, it is here unnecessary 

 to speak. The paleontological work of Mr. Meek served to throw into 

 stong relief the Carboniferous character of the Waverly. The list of fos- 

 sils studied was very small and Mr. Meek was at the time in precarious 

 health, so that we unfortunately were deprived of a thorough discussion 

 of the subject at the hands of the ablest of American paleontologists. 

 To this lack may be ascribed the slow progress subsequently made in 



