Biographical Notice of Ebemzer Emmons. — Maroon. $ 
him two years for the change, but after 1858, colonel Jewett be- 
came the strongest friend of Dr. Emmons, and in his blunt, fear- 
less and military way of talking, he advocated the Taconic system 
and praised its author. 
Unhappily colonel Jewett's principles were averse to publishing 
anything ; but in his correspondence he took such strong ground 
in favor of the Taconic, sending specimens of the trilobites of 
Georgia to Billings, to Barrande and myself, that he contributed 
largely to call the attention of others to the great mistake made by 
the palaeontologist of New York and by the Geological surveys of 
Pennsylvania, Vermont and Canada. From that moment, Dr. 
Emmons was no more alone to sustain his opinion. l There is no 
doubt that colonel Jewett's well known honest}- influenced Bar- 
rande, de Verneuil, Billings, Agassiz. and mj-self in the right 
direction. 
Finally, in 1860, came the "turning point' in favor of Dr. 
Emmons and the Taconic system. Until then Joachim Barrande 
had never seen Emmons' work, nor ever heard of his discoveries, 
except in a sort of distant echo as being untenable and erroneous ; 
but as soon as he was in possession of Emmons' publications, he 
took his part and became the strongest opponent to the transfer of 
the primordial fauna above the second fauna as advocated by the 
palaeontologist of the State of New York, and accepted and main- 
tained boldly by the other opponents of Dr. Emmons. 
Unfortunately, at that moment Dr. Emmons disappeared out of 
sight and reach in the great civil war. Having been state geolo- 
gist of North Carolina since 1851, he left his house at Albany on 
the 2nd of September, I860, never to return. 
A few quotations from his letters and also from some of colonel 
Jewett, all addressed to me, will give in a few words, the true 
history of the results achieved by Dr. Emmons' supporters. 
Having heard through colonel Jewett, that I had made a joint 
communication with Barrande before the Boston Society of Nat- 
ural History, on the 17th of October. 1860, in favor of the 
1 Professor G. Dewey, the old teacher of Emmons always sustai I the 
Taconic system; ami a pupil of Emmons, professor R. P. Stevens, of 
Brooklyn, was also a constant supporter. Bui the death of Vanuxera 
and the retirement of Conrad were extremely unfortunate and left the 
field to those who concentrated and united their efforts to disseminate 
their erroneous views of metamorphic Champlain and of an immense 
Hudson River group. 
