224 REPORT OF THE AMERICAN COM^riTTEE. 
Avere not referred to the primordial zone by means of comparison 
witi) some well-known standard. ■ TJiere loas then no knoitm 
' ntnndard. Mr. Barrande's Notice Preliminaire was not issued 
till 1846. The only standard available was the Champlain 
division of the New York system, and at that date nothing very 
definite was known even of that group concerning its paleon- 
toloEcy, Mr. Emmons did everything that could be done to es- 
tablish the horizon of the trilobites he descril:>ed. He placed them 
in the Taconic, and the Taconic he placed below the Potsdam. It 
is not just to exact of the pioneer geologists that full and thorough 
work which is performed under the rules and methods of the 
present. This priority, moreover, was fully recognized by Mr. 
Barrande, as soon as he obtained copies of the reports of Dr. 
Emmons, and he immediately announced it to the Geological 
Society of France [Seance dii 4 few lev, 1861). 
The dates of publication of the terms Taconic, Cambrian, and 
Primordial, may be tabulated as follows {Amer. Nat., Aug., 1887). 
Used as a faunal 
U 
sed in geological 
Used as the name of a 
designation. 
literature. 
zone or system. 
Taconic, 1844 
1819 
1842 
Cambrian, 1853 
1836 
1836 
Primordial, 1846 
1846 
1846 
The foregoing remarks on the late results of Mr. Walcott are 
demanded at this place, because of the imjwrtance of the investi- 
gation which Mr. Walcott has been engaged in, and because the 
recommendations of the body of report B were based largely on 
his first-stated opinions. It was deemed best to give a full ex- 
pression of these views, and to weigh the new evidence on which 
they were founded. 
N. H. WINCHELL, 
Reporter. 
Minneapolis, Minn., May 18, 1888. 
