1887.] 345 [Marcou. 



of 1886, knows now that these are only erroneous notions put for- 

 ward by the " united opposition of Emmons' contemporaries." 



The use of the name Taconic is a very simple question. It 

 rests entirely on priority. Barrancle has demonstrated, as far back 

 as 1861, that it was in the Taconic system, that the primordial fauna 

 was first discovered in 1844, and, consequently, that the American 

 name has precedence over all other names. 



It is a creed among geologists, a creed which has just received 

 a new sanction and acknowledgment at the meeting of the Com- 

 mission for the uniformity of nomenclature of the International 

 Geological Congress at Geneva, in August last, that no system of 

 stratified rocks is accepted as independent and separate, unless 

 it contain a special fauna. Sedgwick did not find a single fossil 

 in the lower part, of what he called, in 1835, the Cambrian sys- 

 tem, and he had no right to include it in the Cambrian. We have 

 there two systems of strata as well marked and separated as any 

 of the different systems in existence in our classifications. 



The Taconic system is the only Terrain or division of the sec- 

 ond order that can be claimed by American geologists in the gen- 

 eral classification of the strata of the world ; and to surrender it 

 it into the hands of the English is to give up the only claim we 

 have to be recognized as original discoverers. Certainly, we shall 

 preserve also all the classifications of the divisions of the third 

 (divisions), fourth (groups) and fifth (beds), orders special to 

 America ; and on that account there is not the smallest danger to be 

 apprehended of their being suppressed or superseded by European 

 geologists. But it is a patriotic duty for us Americans to preserve 

 and keep religiously, the fact that here, among the mountain ranges 

 which separate the Hudson river and Lake Champlain from the 

 Connecticut river and the Green mountains, the great system, 

 containing the Primordial fauna, was first discovered, pointed out 

 and named. 



Mr. Walcott uses repeatedly the name Ordovician as a synonym 

 or substitute for Lower Silurian (second fauna) confining the name 

 Cambrian to the Taconic or Primordial fauna horizon. It is an 

 unfortunate introduction of a very recent name, for strata well 

 defined and named in America many years previously. Doctor 

 Emmons in his remarkable classification of the Palaeozoic strata 

 of the State of New York in 1842 and 1846, 1 called " Champlain 



1 Geology of New York, Part n, p. 112, and Agriculture of New York, Vol. I, p. 115. 

 Albany, 1812-46. 



