Correspondence. 61 
what he callis the "Magnesian sandstone group" as his "Neoholus 
beds" instead of the "Obohis beds" of Wynne and Stoliczka ; saying 
that tlie term "Produclus liinextone" applied to the whole series "must 
be now considered as a synonym oi Carboniferous." (Preface p. vii ; 
Prague, 1SS7.) In the same preface, which has been issued at the end 
of the "Salt Range fossils," Calcutta, 1887, Mem. Geol. Surv., India, 
series xiii, 1 and 7, Dr. Waagen refers the conidarix of the "speckled 
sandstone" or the Cretaceous "Olive group" of Wynne, also to the 
Carboniferous system, placing them above his "Neobolus beds" and 
below tlie mountain limestone fauna. That other most extraordinary 
inexact paleontologieal interpretation and view, was not accepted by 
all the practical geologists of the survey, and it was opposed, as well 
as his idea of the "Obollus beds" being Carboniferous, by Messrs. 
Medlicott, Wynne, Warth, and Richard D. Oldham. Dr. Waagen did 
go so far in that singular preface as to speak of "animosity" and "con- 
tempt" for his geological ages of the strata of the Salt Range ; because 
all these good and original investigators disagreed with him. These 
complaints of Dr. Waagen are not well founded ; he explored himself 
once the Salt Range mountains in company, with Mr. Wynne, and he 
saw the "Obolus beds" lying under and in unconformity with the 
Carbonifeuous ; and if he had adopted Stoliczka's determination of 
primordial fossils, he would have easily considered his extraordinary 
confusion of placing a whole system of strata in the Carboniferous, 
with which it has absolutely nothing in common. 
A most important discovery has just come to light, which puts an 
end to the great errors held with such pertinacity during the last ten 
years by Dr. Waagen. Tlie indefatigable Dr. Worth, the discoverer 
of the primordial brachiopod fauna and of Conularia, has found some 
trilobites in the "Obolus beds." One of them is a Conocephalites 
which Dr. Waagen himself says is very nearly related, if not identical 
with Conocephalites formos us Hartt, from the St. John group of New 
Brunswick, North America; and another trilobite is perhaps an 
Olenus, or more likely a Dorypt/fje. There is no question that sucli 
form of trilobites can not be of Carboniferous age ; they are decidedly 
Lower Paleozoic and belong to the Middle Taconic. The truth is that 
Dr. Waagen, against stratigraphy, against lithology, and what is worse 
for a paleontologist, against paleontology, has referred and inclosed in 
his Carboniferous system of Punjab : first, the primordial fauna and 
the Taconic system, and second, the "Olive group" of the Nummnlitic 
age ; two errors so enormous that they remind one of the transfer of 
the primordial fauna above the second and even the third by certain 
American geologists ; and the enclosing of the Trias, Jurassic and 
Xeocomian of Texas and Xew Mexico in the Dakota or marly chalk of 
Europe. 
We have those examples as well in Asia as in North America 
of the absolute necessity to check the works of a certain class of pale- 
ontologists, too apt to err in following preconceived ideas. An exact, 
careful and sharply delineated stratigraphy made by practical observ- 
