194 REPORT OF THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE. 
to a set of questions proposed by liira relating to the Archean, have 
been referred to the sub-committee on the Lower Paleozoic, as they 
fall within the scope of the Lower Paleozoic rather than that on 
the Archean, and the import of these is embraced in the following 
report. Whenever any working geologist has published his 
views on the nomenclature of the Lower Paleozoic, his published 
opinions have been considered to be his final and present convic- 
tions, and have been accepted as such. It became evident, how- 
ever, that a comparatively small number of American geologists 
would have to pronounce on the questions involved, and to ren- 
der the decision which this committee should adopt for report to 
the London Congress. To some of these I addressed personal 
letters of inquiry, and I have received important communications 
from Professors James Hall, Albany ; C. H. Hitchcock, Hanover ; 
J. D, Dana, New Haven; Alexander Winchell, of Ann Arbor; 
Messrs. C. D. AValcott, Washington; S. W. Ford, Scho- 
dack, and Dr. J. S. Newberry of New York. Mr. Walcott, how- 
ever, in the week just preceding the meeting of this committee at 
New Haven, Conn., withdrew his communication, and has not 
supplied me with any other. I have been obliged, therefore, to 
rely on his published statements of fact and opinion, so far as 
they bear upon questions involved in the following digest. 
Your reporter would call attention to the fact that, owing to 
the great divergence of opinion among American geologists on 
some of the questions involved in the nomenclature of the Lower 
Paleozoic, it is an exceedingly difficult task to compare and digest 
them so as to make a consistent stratigraphic scheme ; and that 
it is impossible to reduce them to any symmetry without doing 
violence to the convictions of some. It is, on the other hand, a 
pleasure to state that, owing to the researches of Messrs. Dana, 
Marcou, Ford, Walcott, Wing, Dwight, Dale, and others, some 
of these unsettled differences appear recently in new garbs, and 
may be approached anew with some confidence, in the expectation 
of arriving at a nearly or quite unanimous conclusion. Your 
reporter has studied carefully all published literature, and has 
had correspondence with numerous geologists, and he offers the 
appended classification of the Lower Silurian and Cambrian rocks 
of America as the result of this study. He does not flatter him- 
self that all geologists who have studied these rocks will be willing 
to accept this classification. Such were a vain hope; but he be- 
