330 The American Geoloffist. May, 1897 
NOMENCLATURE OF THE GALENA AND 
MAQUOKETA SERIES. 
By F. W, Sardeson, Minneapolis, Minn. 
The synonymy and classification of the Galena and Maquo- 
keta series and their divisions has already been discussed in 
the American Geologist,* and I have at this time in view a 
short supplementary discussion of certain ditiiculties in no- 
menclature, which have recently developed, and which would 
seem to prove that the nomenclature is not yet free from un- 
necessary confusion. For the present, at least, it may be as- 
sumed that uniformity in classification has been nearl}'^ estab- 
lished, and I shall therefore limit this discussion to the subject 
of nomenclature. N. H. Winchell and E. O. Ulrich have, in 
their recent investigation of the two seriesf quite independ- 
ently, arrived at nearly the same classification as that which 
1 adopted in my former paper, and the conclusions of these 
two able geologists, which will no doul)t be widely accepted 
;is authoritative, will, in the main, strengthen my own. But 
regarding the nomenclature, there not only has been, but 
there will probably continue to be, a burden of discordant 
appellations of these geologic formations unless we can obvi- 
ate the sources from which the discord arises. It is with a 
view to contributing something towards the establishment of 
uniformity that this paper is ofi^'ered. 
The difficulty arises chiefl}^ from conflicting correlations of 
the geoh)gic representatives of this area with those of distant 
areas, whereby the names of elsewhere distinct formations 
come to be applied to the same formation here. Again, a du- 
plication of local terms is intruded; or unnecessary trans- 
lations of one term to another obtains. 
Winchell and Ulrich (op. cit.) have adopted by coi'relation 
the name Trenton instead of the local term. Galena formation, 
and have rejected the name Trenton for the next older forma- 
tion, the Beloit formation; a change that is not entirely ob- 
jectionable considering the transference alone of the name of 
Trenton from one formation to another, but the future will be 
difi^erent from the past if some one does not find reason to 
shift the name once more, and add to the confusion of seven 
*Vol. XVIII, p. 356, and vol. xix, p. 21. 
tFinal Rep. Geo!. Sur. Minnesota, vol. iii, pt. 2, Introduction, (1897). 
