122 The Taconic Question Restated. : [Feb. 
cordances were again noticed,’ when it was said of the volume, that 
Emmons therein “showed a divided opinion as to the horizon of 
the First Graywacke.” This might be supposed to indicate the 
acceptance, for a time, of the views of Mather before finally adopt- 
ing those of his old master, Eaton. It will, however, be noted 
that the passages, four or five pages in all, found intercalated in 
different parts of his account of the New York System, incul- 
cating the doctrines of Mather, are in complete opposition alike 
to the whole teaching in the three chapters—vii., viii., and ix. (pp. 
135-164)—given to the Taconic System, and to his extended 
monograph thereon, published in 1844, so that one is led as an 
„explanation of this strange contradiction to suppose that the 
passages in question may be interpolations by another hand. 
There is a painful resemblance in many respects between the 
story of Emmons and his opponents; and that of the warfare 
waged against Sedgwick by Murchison and his allies in the 
famous Cambrian and Silurian controversy, as set forth by the 
present writer in 1874 in his “ Chemical and Geological Seo 
= m 365). 
. The Taconic system, in the chapters just mentioned of pe 
e of 1842, was said to include, in ascending order, the 
“ Granular quartz” (or Primitive Quartz-rock), the “ Stockbridge 
limestone” (or Primitive Lime-rock), and the “ Magnesian slate.” 
This latter, the Transition Argillite, comprehended, besides the 
characteristic roofing-slate, a great mass of soft and more or less 
schistose rocks, which, from the prevalence in them of hydrous 
micas (and occasionally of chlorites), have an unctuous character, 
_ 1 Mineral Physiology and Physiography, = 522, 583, 584, 587. 
2Loc. cit., pp. 121, 124, 125, 147, 279, 2 
3In a letter from Emmons to ae eae Raleigh, N. C., December 29, 
1860, he writes, “I made and published with my Report a modified map of the 
State, which showed the extent of the Taconic rocks in New York. The three thou- 
. sand copies were stolen or destroyed by ns unknown, so that they were never 
issued with the proper volume. The rocks illustrating the Taconic system in the State 
Cabinet were all taken out, by order . My existence as one of the 
gists was ignored at the last meeting “of the American Association for the Aei 
ment of Science in Albany [1851]. In fine, the persecution I suffered for opinion 
has rarely been equalled. . . . The editor of the American Journal of Science re- ` 
courteous in the extreme. I claimed that 
ae __ faxed to publish my remarks upon Logan’s report when he [Logan] announced his _ 
