Miller on the Taconic. 235 
THE TACONIC SYSTEM AS ESTABLISHED BY EMMONS, 
AND THE LAWS OF NOMENCLATURE APPLICABLE 
TO THE SUBJECT. 
BY S. A. MILLER. 
The term Taconic system must be retained for all the rocks 
existing between those belonging to the Laurentian age and the 
Potsdam group or base of the Lower Silurian series, if it was 
properly defined and published prior to the definition of any 
other geographical name for the same rocks. In other words, 
the laws of priority, in naming groups of rocks and the so-called 
systems, must be as rigidly enforced as they are in the naming 
of fossils and plants, if we are to have system and order, instead 
of confusion, in geological science. When a group of rocks 
have been named, and the fossils from them have been des- 
cribed and illustrated so the rocks may be identified by a palae- 
ontologist elsewhere than at the t3'pical locality, the name must 
be retained, to the exclusion of all names subsequently pro- 
posed. Synonymy in stratigraphical geology, is quite as odious 
and objectionable as it is in palaeontology, and most of it has 
resulted' from the ambition of those whose work has rather re- 
tarded than advanced the progress of science. 
The value of the rule of priority, as thus stated, will find no 
more forcible illustration, than that presented by an examina- 
tion of the extent of the rocks now under review, and the his- 
tory of the synonymy to which they have been subjected. 
In 1842 Ebenezer Emmons, in his report on the second geo- 
logical district of New York, described the rocks lying on the 
sides of the Taconic mountains, parallel with the boundary line 
between New York and Vermont, under the name of the Ta- 
conic system. He found the belt on the western border of the 
mountains more than fifteen miles wide, and on the eastern side 
nearly twenty-five miles, making a total of nearly forty miles. 
The rocks occur in Westchester, Columbia, Rensselaer and 
Washington counties, and stretching the whole length of Ver- 
mont enter Canada and extend beyond Quebec. He mentioned 
a typical locality in Berkshire, Massachusetts. The general 
character of the rocks was given as follows: 
1. A coarse granular limestone of various colors, called Stockbridge 
imestone from the quarries at that place. 
