ar 
‘Taconic to the Hudson River appears first in Prof. Emmons’s Agri 
published in 1843. 
198 WHAT IS TRUE TACONIC? 
Geological Report, 4to., 1842, the rocks so-called are those of the 
Taconic mountains, on the borders of Massachusetts and New 
York, together with the quartzite, limestone, and slates adjoining 
on the east,* and not the slates far west of these mountains; 
moreover the slates, the rocks of the mountain, were the typical 
beds, and not the quartzite. Hence, if ‘there are any Taconic 
schists or slates, those of the Taconic range are the rocks entitled 
to bear the name, being Taconic geographically, and Taconic by 
the earliest authoritative use, Prof. Emmons the authority. 
Prof. Emmons, in his Agricultural Report, subsequently pub- 
lished (in 1843), announced the Primordial beds of Bald Mt. (neat 
Canaan Four Corners, in Columbia Co. N. Y.), as Taconic also; 
but this did not make them so. He referred to the Taconic the 
Black slates of northern Vermont, since shown to contain primor- 7 
dial fossils; he searched the country north and south for other ‘ 
Taconic rocks, and found them as he thought ; and he set others on 
the search, not only in this country, but over the world. But all 
this has not changed the fact that the true Taconic beds, if any ae 
such, are those he first so announced ; and that the rest, s0 far as 
they are of different age from these, younger or older, have been i 
dragged into the association without reason. The Taconic rocks 
of Berkshire and of the counties of New York just west ae 
bore the most prominent part in his later descriptions of the Tx 
conic system. 
The error on the part of Prof. Emmons, in referring beds of 
other ages to the Taconic system, is not surprising considering 
the difficulties in the case. But it was no less an error; 
name as a backer cannot make the wrong right. 
* Professor Emmons opens the subject of the “Taconic System » in his 
(1843) by saying that it extends north through Vermont to Quebec, a” 
Connecticut; but the only rocks a describes as the rocks l the sys 
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and their continuation ar mee 
These are the typical rocks on which the system wa as aa On pha i 
ures fe ae ctions across this particular region are given 
ions are contained in the only other Tiiti on the 8 
fn figure, 
through Graylock, raiona slate” stops just west of Berlin, 
New York, the slates on the west being put down as “ Hudson 
figs. 2 and 3, the boundary k near Petersburg, north of Berlin. 
