8 Tin American Geologist. Jan. i89i 
says: " I never treated Mr. James Hall unkindly in my life. I 
was the instrument who secured his appointment as palaeontolo- 
gist by governor Marcy. " Tlic ostracism to which Emmons was 
subjected — being "in fact ruled out of American geologists — led 
him to 'look upon the subject with a kind of indifference,'' as he 
says in his published letter to E. Billings, dated Raleigh. Feb. ."), 
1861. ( "Remarks on the Taconic Controversy," by E. Billings ; 
Canadian Naturalist, April, 1872). Nevertheless, from 1855 to 
1860, in his ••American Geology'' and "Manual of Greology," 
Dr. Emmons maintained sternly his views, his opinions and dis- 
coveries, continuing to give new facts, well observed, as well 
palseontologically as stratigraphically ; and going so far as to 
identify the fauna he had found in his Taconic system with the 
primordial fauna of Bohemia, so well described by Barrande. 
In 1856, a change took place in the curatorship of the State 
Cabinet of Natural History of New York, which was the begin- 
ning of the vindication of Dr. Emmons' opinions and discoveries. 
John (ielihard Jr. , a very inefficient curator, who removed from 
the State collection, in obedience to " order given by Dr. Beck. 
on an ex-parte statement', the Taconic specimens of Dr. Emmons, 
and placed some of them in the Hudson River group, resigned and 
was replaced by colonel Ezekiel Jewett. At first, it seemed that 
one opponent of Emmons' had been replaced by another, and 
the first time that Dr. Emmons met the new curator in the Mu- 
seum, he said : ; -I suppose that like the others you will not speak 
to me and recognize my position of state geologist, " alluding to 
Gebhard arid F. B. Meek, who both avoided Dr. Emmons each 
time lie entered the Museum. But colonel Jewett was not a man 
to be long influenced by prejudice and unfounded accusations, and 
although influenced at first by his relation and friendship with the 
paleontologist of New York, he was determined to see for himself. 
Being an excellent collector of fossils and a good stratigraphist, he 
soon saw that there was something wrong about the so-called enor- 
mous Hudson River group, and the pretended Champlain metamor- 
phosed heds of the Hudson liver valley : and little by little, by 
his own observations in the field, and his better acquaintance with 
the methods of the two parties, he was led to become a strong ad- 
herent to the Taconic system and its author Dr. Emmons, to the 
detriment <>f the metamorphosed Champlain and enormous Hud- 
son River group advocated by the state paleontologist. It took 
