The Taconlc — Marcou. 85 
publication and of Mr. Walcott's papers, that in the Taconic 
area, there is not a single strata of the Chaniplain [Lower Sil- 
in-ian] rocks. All the deposits without the smallest exception in 
Berkshire, Rensselaer, Bennington, Rutland, Chittenden and 
Franklin counties belong to the Taconic Series. On the extreme 
western limit of Washington and Addison counties, close by 
the great massive of the Adirondack, we have a very small 
area covered by the Champlain system. The city of Albany 
and the very spot on which is built the State Museum of 
Natural History, lie on the upjDer Taconic division of the 
Swanton slates, and I am convinced from my numerous 
observations in Vermont, Canada and New York, that the 
adversaries of the Taconic series, have constantly erred from 
the begining in 1842 until now; and that if their errors in 1843^ 
were somewhat excusable, they have not been excusable 
since 1844, after Dr. Emmons' jDublication of his "Taconic 
system" containing a special fauna, the greatest, most important 
and difficult discovery in American geology. The continuance 
of the opposition to this day, due mainly to Messrs. Hall, Dana 
and Walcott, show an absence of geological "principles" almost 
unexplainable. 
It is not the first time that I have corrected a very great 
and grave error in stratigraphic geology; for in 1859, without 
going to Russia — where I never was to this day — I have proved 
in "Dyas et Trias" ^Archives des scieiices de la Bibliothequ'e de 
Geneve^'M.^x et Juin) that the great geological map published 
by,Murchison, de Verneuil et de Keyserling was wrong, in 
covering vast areas of that empire with the Dyas [Permian], 
According to those three learned explorers of Russia, the Trias 
was almost entirely absent, being reduced on this map, to a 
small spot not larger than a pin head of Muschelkalk at Mount 
Bogdo. In my pajDcr I proved that the Permian of Murchi- 
son contained the whole Trias, and that two thirds of the sur- 
face colored as Permian [Dyas] belonged really to the Triassic 
system. After a sharp oppositon on the part of Murchison and 
his partisans my opinion and classification have been entirely 
accepted, and now all the general geological maps of Russia 
show, instead of a single spot of Trias, immense surfaces covered 
by it, as large as twice the united Kingdom of England and 
