Marcou.] 
72 
[Nov. 7, 
broken, twisted and folded slates extending as far as the boun- 
dary line of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New Brunswick. 
Those slates inclose in some places diabases, granite, gneiss, mica- 
schists, serpentines, talcose conglomerates, etc., and on a very 
narrow line from lake Memphremagog to Gaspe they inclose more 
or less, in their folds, some patches of another system, much 
younger, of which we shall speak presently. 
That great slate system, older than the Champlain, is the Ta- 
conic system of Dr. Emmons. The groups made out by me in Ver- 
mont are easily recognizable in Canada, and the classification and 
nomenclature published by me in 1862, for the vicinity of Quebec 
city in the tabular section accompanying my “ letter to M. Joa- 
chim Barrande, on the Taconic rocks of Vermont and Canada,” an- 
swer all the wants for the whole area of the province of Quebec. 
The youngest group, directly below the Champlain system, is 
the “Citadel hill and city of Quebec group,” containing in Canada 
and in the United States (at Quebec, Swanton, near Bald moun- 
tain, Normanskill near Albany, etc.) the third zone of graptolites. 
It has an average thickness of 3,000 feet. 
Then comes the “ Phillipsburgh and Pointe Levis group,” also 
3,000 feet thick, with a fauna containing mixed forms of the Pri- 
mordial types and second fauna types, as at Hoff in Bohemia, in Nor- 
way, Sweden and Wales. In it the graptolites are very numerous 
and form the second zone of graptolites in America. 
In both these two groups which belong to the Upper Taconic 
system, the fossils are always found, now and then ; never in a con- 
tinuous line of outcrops as in the Champlain system. They are 
sporadic, like the colonies in Bohemia. 
Directly below the Levis group, we have the “ Georgia group,” 
with a thickness of five or six hundred feet, containing in Canada 
a purety primordial fauna. 
Below the “Georgia group” belt we have the “St. Albans group” 
with its quartzites or granular quartz, slates and argillites extremely 
poor of fossils in New England, as far as known, entirely devoid 
of fossil remains in Canada, and in which very likely, we may find 
an extension of the Olenellus zone. It occupies large spaces in 
the province of Quebec southeast of the Georgia group belt. 
These divisions of the Taconic system may be repeated in two 
or three places ; but until now only the band of the “ Citadel hill 
group ” has been found repeated in the eastern townships. 
