Biographical Notice of Ehenezei Ermnom. — Marcou. 7 
metamorphosis ; " and from that date until the meeting of the 
Boston Society of Natural History, of October 17, 1860, when I 
made a joint communication with Barrande "On the primordial 
fauna and the Taconic system," the Taconic was considered as 
metamorphosed beds, "in the utmost confusion," of the Cham- 
plain, Upper Silurian, Devonian and even Carboniferous, b} r 
Messrs. H. D. Rogers, W. B. Rogers, Ed. Hitchcock, W. W. 
Mather, James Hall, W. E. Logan, and J. D. Dana. 
Dr. Emmons' "Taconic system'' of 1841 with its fossil de- 
scriptions and figures, instead of disarming his adversaries was re- 
ceived with an opposition which from that moment took a form of 
persecution, unique in the history of geology, even when compared 
with the not very creditable course taken by Murchison against 
Sedgwick. Having inserted in his first volume of ' -Agriculture 
of New York," as an" Introduction " necessary for the understand- 
ing of all the soils, a description of the Taconic and New York 
systems, with fine sections, beautiful geological views and fossils, 
Dr. Emmons prepared a geological map, " a reprint in the main 
of the map which accompanies the first reports," with the Taconic 
system colored and made a distinct part of the map. But the 
map was so obnoxious to some of the geological corps of the state 
of New York, that although it was described at p. 3G3 of the vol- 
ume, and paid for by the state treasurer, it was suppressed and 
remained concealed until 1887. So Emmons did not see it even, 
and he died believing that the map had been destroyed by some 
unknown person. 
I shall not speak of all the malicious acts to which poor 
Emmons was subjected by his opponents ; I have sufficiently ex- 
posed some of them in my "American geological classification and 
nomenclature," Cambridge, 1888, and in several others of my 
papers published lately. I shall only say that : " During the dis- 
cussion upon the Taconic system, when his views were opposed by 
some in a manner which certainly to say the least, was not fair. I 
never heard him express a word showing anger, or petulance 
toward his adversaries," as one member of his family writes t<> 
me. And when detailing to me himself the persecution he had 
been subjected to for scientific opinion, in his letter of the 28th of 
December. I860, which I have published in part in " The Taconic 
system and its position in stratigraphic geolog}' " {Proceed. Amer. 
A<(i<l. Arts "in/ Sci., new series, vol. xii, p. 188, Cambridge), he 
