J. D. Dana— Views of Professor Emmons. 413 
the Sparry lime-rock of Eaton, was the stratigraphical equivalent 
of the lower part of the Champlain division, and in fact a thick- 
ened and modified form of the Calciferous sandrock, which was 
now said to be in its eastern extension‘ protean’ in its character 
and to include a great variety of rocks.” Besides this, we find 
also in the same paper, the idea that Professor Emmons “ came 
forward in 1842 as the champion of the views of Eaton,” and this 
idea is repeated afterward in other championing words in which 
the first correct announcement of the age of the Taconic System 
is traced to Eaton. 
Since it is established, by the facts already presented in this 
memoir, that Emmons’s Sparry or western limestone, and his 
Stockbridge limestone (the eastern) are one in mass, any argu- 
ment sustaining the Calciferous age of the Sparry limestone sus- 
tains the same for the Stockbr idge. limestone. But that Professor 
Emmons suggested the Calciferous as the age of either of these 
limestones, or of the “ Taconic slate,” in his memoir of 1844 and 
1846, or was a “champion of the views of Eaton,” I have been 
able to find no proof. 
The “Champion of the views of Eaton,” Professor Emmons, 
has these three sentences relating to Professor Eaton in his Re- 
port on the Geology of New York (1842). 
On page 19, speaking of previous geological work in northern 
New York, he says: ‘“ Previous to the year 1837, nothing exact 
was known of the geology of the northern district. Mr. “Eaton, 
who was the oldest laborer in geology in New York, had not ex- 
tended his observations far into this field. He had, however, 
represented the McCombe Mountains as composed of ranges of 
gneiss, extending from the valley of the Mohawk to the Provin- 
cial line, and the intermediate valleys, of limestone extending 
along their bases and around their northern extremities ; and the 
whole section as being composed of two principal formations, a 
Carboniferous slate, denominated Primary, and a calcareous for- 
mation, denominated Secondary. I[t is sufficiently evident that 
all this was imaginary ; it is even difficult to conceive how imagi- 
nation could have carried even a partial observer so far from the 
truth.”* 
Two lines below, on the same page, we have: “In this paper 
[by Mr. aA there is a brief account of the rocks of this county 
[St. Lawrence]; the Potsdam sandstone was spoken of as a Transi- 
tion rock, and the Calciferous sand-rock of Eaton as a siliceous 
limestone.” 
On p. 280: ‘“‘The mass of grit is the greywacke of authors; 
some portions are brecciated, or belong to that variety denom- 
inated rubble by the late Professor Eaton.” 
* Tn this Journal. III, xix, 270, 1880, Dr. Hunt says that the lithological char- 
acters of the primary gneissic formation of northern New York ‘were clearly de- 
fined by Eaton, who under the name of the Macomb Mountains, described what 
have since been called the Adirondacks,” etc. 
Am. Jour. Sci.— THIRD Serres, VoL. XX XIII, No. 197.—May, 1887. 
