122 Barrande and the Taconic System — Marcou. 
of Barrande and Marcou in his hands, every geologist may 
make up his own mind and draw his own conclusions. The 
final verdict may be delayed a few more years, until a thorough 
survey with geological maps on a large scale where every fact 
as it exists in the field will be noted and figured; and a detailed 
description of all the strata, outcrops, sections; fossils with all 
their meaning, such as abundance or variety, and associations 
carefully noted; of the entire Taconic and of the Champlain 
areas, have been completed. 
The future of the Taconic system has been fully assured 
since the day of the publication of the joint paper of Barrande 
and Marcou, by the Boston Society of Natural History in De¬ 
cember, 1860; and ever since opposition, confusion, obscurity, 
omission, contradiction, continual changes of opinion and un¬ 
happily also even “discourteous acts” have been the exclusive 
monopoly of the adversaries of the Taconic system. Unscrupu¬ 
lous and unintelligent; such are the two expressions properly 
applied to the consolidated association of those who since 1842 
have constantly opposed and even denied the existence of the 
Primordial fauna and the Taconic system in America. Errors 
and misujiderslandings may be reasonably expected in any diffi¬ 
cult geological question; but for the last twenty-five years the 
discussions have degenerated into a struggle of wounded self- 
love, in order to cover, as long as possible the damaged reputa¬ 
tion of three or four leaders, too deeply engaged to retrace their 
steps backward, and accept openly their defeat. 
Mr. Dana’s conclusions. —The conclusions of the last paper 
of Mr. Dana are in harmony with his appreciation of Barrande’s 
“confusions” introduced in American geology. 
Here are Mr. James D. Dana’s anti-Taconie ideas, which ac¬ 
cording to his judgment and extreme desire must settle the 
Taconic question and suppress it forever: 
“It is thus finally made positive that the Taconic system is not 
a pre-Silurian system, and that the claiming for it equivalency 
with the Huronian was but a leap in the dark. It is manifest 
in fact, that Taconic system is only a synonym of the older 
term, Lower Silurian, as this term was used by geologists gen¬ 
erally, twenty, thirty and forty years since, and by many 
writers till a much later date.” 
“It is almost fifty years since the Taconic system made its 
