liules and Misrules in Classijication. — JIarcoii. 117 
the Coal series of Chatfield county in Virginia, as well as the 
Red sandstone of Anson and Orange counties in North Caro- 
lina to the Trias, the whole having a thickness of more than 
5,000 feet. It was an excellent first start, to arrive at a ra- 
tional classification of the numerous strata of the New Red 
sandstone which extends from the two Carolinas to the Con- 
necticut valley. Instead of following the researches so well 
begun in North Carolina, the geologists w^ho studied the New 
Red in Virginia, Marj'land, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Con- 
necticut and Massachusetts, seem to have had in view to use 
the fossil remains found ^here to diminish as much as possi- 
ble the importance of the classitication of Dr. Emmons, re- 
ducing it to the smallest and youngest part of the New Red 
classification of Europe, and seeing in the American strata 
only the equivalent of the Rhetic formation. Even at first an 
attempt was made to refer the whole series of the eastern 
United States to the Lower Oolite of the Jura of Yorkshire 
(England). 
Happily the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, thanks to 
the carefully executed researches of the geologist, Mr. Ben- 
jamin Smith Lyman,* in the two counties of Bucks and Mont- 
gomery, has found out. first, that the series, instead of having 
a thickness of only 1,500 feet, was about 27,000 feet thick, 
and second, that the pala:>,ontologic age of that series has 
never been satisfactorily determined in Pennsylvania, New 
Jersey and the Connecticut valley. 
Mr. Lyman has divided the wliole series in Montgomery 
county in the following manner: 
( Pottstovvn shales 10,700 feet. 
Doubtful age ■] Perkasie shales 2,000 ' ' 
/ Lansdale shales 4.700 " 
Trias— Gwynedd shales .3,500 " 
Dyas — Norristovvn shales 6,100 " 
27,000 feet. 
The age of the upper part, that is to say, the great divisions 
of Pottstown, Perkasie and Lansdale, is rather doubtful, on 
account of the rarity of fossils. It maj'' be in the greater 
*See "Some New Red Horizons'" (Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, vol. xxxiii, 
1894): a most interesting paper, not only on the question regarding the 
New Red, but also as regards "geological methods as distinguished from 
f)urely paliBontological ones." See also "Report of the New Red of 
Bucks and Montgomery counties" (PenuHulvania State Geuloyical Sum- 
mary, Final Report, vol. in, Part II, 1895). 
