238 Miller on the Taconic. 
but has forever set the question at rest, in that locaHty; Wing, 
Dale and Dwight have sustained his assertions respecting the 
want of conformability of the Hudson River slates with the 
Taconic. All the surveys of Michigan and Wisconsin have 
sustained him, though the geologists apply the later name, 
Huronian, to these strata. His determinations of the rockS in 
North Carolina have been most fully confirmed by later geo- 
logists, though some also use the word Huronian when refer- 
ring to them. 
In 1849 Alexander Murray an assistant on the geological 
survey of Canada, in the report of progress for the year 1847, 
described the rocks on the north side of lake Huron and many 
of the adjacent islands under the name of "quartz rocks and 
sandstones, conglomerates, slates and limestones," and correctly 
identified them as resting unconformably upon the older grani- 
tic and syenitic gneiss, and succeeded unconformably by the 
Potsdam; but he did not call them by any geological name. 
If he had read Emmon's "Taconic System," it is diflScult to 
conceive why he should have hesitated in referring the rocks to 
that system. In the report of progress of 1856 he described 
these rocks under the name of the " Huronian series," which 
was adopted by the officers of the Canadian survey, without 
once mentioning the Taconic system. From that time forward 
authors have generally used the name Huronian, and have al- 
most annihilated the name Taconic. The word Taconic how- 
ever has priority over Huronian ; it is equally appropriate, and 
the definition of the fossils in the upper slates at once furnishes 
the means of tracing it and determining it at different and dis- 
tant places. The word "Huronian" is therefore a synonym 
for Taconic, and comprehended, as used originally by the Cana- 
dian geologists, substantially the same series of rocks, though not 
ascending quite so high. 
A section of the so-called Huronian, but more properly the 
Lower Taconic, between the Mississippi and St. Mary's rivers 
in ascending order is as follows: 
1 . Grey quartzyte 500 feet. 
2. Greenish, red-weathering chloritic and epidotic slates 2000 " 
3. White quartzyte etc 1000 " 
4 Slate conglomerate 1280 " 
5. Limestone 3oo " 
6 Slate conglomerate etc 3000 " 
