696 Notes on Classification and Nomenclature, [Ang 
and Cambrian were first used be brought to bear on this investi- 
gation, the facts will be-found to be about as follows : E 
_ Murchison says the term Cambrian was first used in print in 
1836, but Sedgwick says he had been at work on the formation 1 
since 1831, his first description being made and published in 
brief in the Proceedings of the British Association for the Advant- | 
ment of Science in 1832. In 1855 he also says he had made no 
material changes in the Cambrian since 1832, except some minor 
transpositions of stratigraphy. All this time the lower portion £ 
of these rocks was considered non-fossiliferous, Sedgwick not 
being willing even to admit the verity of fossils belonging t9 
the primordial fauna in any of the rocks of his series. It is@ f 
singular fact that, although Mr. E. Davis discovered fossils it 
the rocks of the Cambrian in 1845, and had re-examined the 
locality with Mr. Sedgwick in 1846, and announcement of the | 
discovery was made the same year, yet the English geologists 4 
did not know, or would not admit, that the primordial fauna de 
Barrande was contained in the rocks of the Cambrian till 185% 
when Barrande visited the Woodwardian Museum, and exami 
also the collections of the survey; and even then they would not 
admit it till they had sent some of their own officers over the : 
ground which they had considered finally examined, and these 
had returned with a convincing collection of primordial fossils. . 
Barrande’s notice preliminaire of the primordial fauna of Bey 
hemia was issued in 1846, two or three years after the discovery 
of primordial fossils in the Taconic, and five years before the 
discovery of primordial fossils in the Cambrian. — - 
It appears, therefore, that as a formation of rocks, without 
reference to geological age or relation to other formations, the 
Cambrian was studied by Sedgwick four years before Emmons 
began official work on the New York survey; that the term 3 
Cambrian was used as a designation for the formation WEY 
Sedgwick was engaged on in 1836; and that Emmons used the ; 
"term Taconic officially first in his volume dated 1842. Emmons 
was, however, at work incidentally on the Taconic rocks much 
earlier, Professor Dewey mentions a mineral found by him 3 
analyzed in 1820 (Am. Four., (i.) ii. 249). Professor Dewey * 
the Taconic range asa geological entity, and the rocks of the 
range as a starting-point, in his “ Geological Section from V” 
liamstown to the City of Troy,” published in 1820. Thet? 
H 
