48 The American Geologist. January, i^97 
Calciferous at the base of the Chaiuplain system and the 
other at the very top of that system as superior to tiie classi- 
cal Utiea-Lorrain division. The process employed, if accepted, 
will break all the rules of stratigraphic classification, replac- 
ing well observed facts by hypotheses. 
In 1888 appeared a paper entitled, " The Original Chazy 
Rocks" (Amek. Gkologist, vol. 2. No. 5, November), by 
Messrs. E. Brainerd and Henry M. Seely, which disposes of 
the typical Calciferous, recorded as existing near Chazy vil- 
lage by Emmons and others, as not belonging to that forma- 
tion. The authors of that paper have tried to make of it a 
new great division, regarded as the lower part of the Chazy, 
which they call "Group A of the Chazy Limestone." By that 
suppression of the true Calciferous at Chazy village and town- 
ship we have there, according to the authors, a gap in the 
stratigraphy which they explain b}'' a fault, or an instance of 
non-deposition, — they are not sure which — due to elevation 
of the sea bed in that region when what they call the Calcif- 
erous deposits were taking place. As the same strata of the 
Chazy village continue witiiout interruption as far as lake St. 
Louis on the St. Lawrence river, and farther west, the typical 
Calciferous of New York and Canada is suppressed without 
any visible fault, or without any visible break. Then comes 
the problem how to account for placing between, what Messrs. 
Brainerd and Seely call the "Group A of the Chaz}' rocks'" 
and the Potsdam sandstone, their new Calciferous formation 
or Phillipsburgh group, of a thickness of 1,800 feet, according 
to their calculation. They say they have found in Beckman- 
town, eight miles south of Chazy, their Calciferous, 300 or 
400 feet only in thickness — not 1,800 feet — and they take a 
special care to omit to give either a section or description 
with fossil list. 
The views of Messrs. Brainerd and Seely have been accepted 
and used lately in " Preliminary Report on the geology of 
Clinton County, New York," by Mr. H. P. Gushing {JSfeir 
York State JIuseum, Report J,7, pp. 669-683, Albany, 1894); 
but without any proofs, by well observed stratigraphy or pa- 
laiontological researches; simply calling to the rescue the 
supposed existence of numerous invisible faults, "which are 
frequently difficult to locate from lack of outcrops in sulli- 
