OF NORTH AMERICA. 
lit 
The knowledge of the geographical extension of the New Bed is due to several geologists : 
to Dr. Charles T. Jackson and Francis Alger — Nova Scotia, 1828 — ; to Colonel F. H. Baddeley, 
Royal, Engineers — the Magdalen Islands and Bryons Island, 1831-82 — ; to Dr. D. Houghton — 
Lake Superior, 1843 — ; to J. W. Dawson — Prince Edward’s Island, 1848 — ; and finally to Prof. 
Emmons — North Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey; 1855-57. 
The second modification of Maclure’s classification was made in 1828 hy L. VanuxemO- Maclure 
considered all the rocks covering the Atlantic coast of the United States as forming but a single 
deposit, and belonging to one age, the Alluvial. Vanuxem was the first to perceive the confusion 
existing upon this subject, and American geology owes to him the distinction between the Secon- 
dary, Tertiary, and Quaternary rocks, and also the discovery of the Cretaceous rocks. 
I give below Vanuxem’s diagram, or Tabular view of these three formations; arranged, as he 
says, « according to what I believe to be their relative geological positions. 
( Vegetable mould. 
Modern Alluvial. I . 
( River Alluvium. 
Ancient Alluvial. 
White siliceous sand. 
Red earth. 
Tertiary. 
Secondary. 
Beds of Ostrese. 
Mass of Limestone, Buhrstone, Sand and Clay. 
Lignite. 
Marl of New Jersey and Delaware. 
« Secondary formation. — None of the characteristic fossil shells of this formation — Marl of New 
Jersey and Delaware — have ever been found in the overlying Tertiary deposits of the Southern States; 
nor have they been observed to characterize any formation in Europe more modern than the chalk; the 
shells — Terebratula, Gryphcea, Exogyra, Ammonites, Baculites , and Belemnites’') — therefore being ge- 
nerically analogous to those of the chalk, the two formations are to be considered as contemporaneouss. 
« Tertiary formation. — This great region — from the Island of Nantucket to the southern part of 
the Peninsula of Maryland — is characterized by littoral shells, analogous to those of the Tertiary de- 
posits of the Paris and English basins: unlike the Secondary, this formation contains a vast number of 
genera — Ostrea, Pecten. Area, Pectunculus, Turritella, Buccinum, Venus , Mactra, Natica, Tellina, Nucula, 
Yenericardia, Chama, Calyptrea, Fusus, Panopaa, Serpula, Dentalium, Cerithium, Oliva, Lucina , Perna, 
”) « I have examined Ihe extensive collection of the characteristic fossil shells of New Jersey and Delaware , in 
« the collection of Dr. Morton, as well as my own collection from the same localities , and consider them as afford- 
« ing unequivocal evidence of the correctness of the geological position which I have assigned to this formation. I 
« refer to Dr. Morion’s paper (which follows this) for the specific descriptions of these fossils ». — L. Vanuxem. 
t) Lardner Vanuxem was born at Philadelphia, where his father was an eminent merchant. Ho was 
a pupil at the mining school at Paris, in 1817 — 18 and 19, where he heard the lectures of Cuvier, 
I’abbo Hauy, and Alex. Brongniart. His training under such teachers accounts for his subsequent suc- 
cess as a geological discoverer, and it is easy to see in his Tabular view of the Secondary, Tertiary, 
and Alluvial rooks of the United States, and also of the Transition rocks of New York, the effect of the 
lessons of Cuvier and Brongniait on the Geologic des environs de Paris. Vanuxem died the 25"’ January, 
1848, at his farm near Bristol, Pennsylvania. 
