Barrande and the Taconic System — Marcou. 129 
disarrangement, I venture to say that no man, at present living, 
will ever see a perfect map of the Taconic region. 
“The theory, that the Taconic rocks belonged to the Hudson 
River group, was an enormous error that originated in the 
Geological Survey of New York, and thence found its way into 
the Canadian Survey.” 
* * “Dr. Hunt, in his published address to the American 
Association, in August last, indirectly associates Prof. Hall with 
me in the rectification of the mistake, whereas neither Prof. 
Hall nor Dr. Hunt contributed any aid whatever, but on the 
contrary, opposed the change that has been made to the ut¬ 
most.” (“Remarks on the Taconic controversy,” in the Cana¬ 
dian Nat., April, 1872.) 
The aristocracy complained of by Billings, although not 
composed of the most talented and learned American geologists, 
has succeeded in maintaining its influential position notwith¬ 
standing their three or four dozen of “leaps in the dark.” It 
is not that their position is as secure as it was formerly, nor 
that they form so compact a body as it used to be in 1860; but 
it is still solid enough to control in a certain degree and keep 
under their influence the majority of less active or less influen¬ 
tial geologists, who do not dare yet to shake off the yoke under 
which they have labored so long. Their submission has become 
for many of them a sort of matter of course, almost a creed. 
The control of the whole body of American geologists by two 
men, backed by half a dozen assistants, a little less conspicuous, 
but also strongly intrenched in official positions of some sort, 
is still an easy task, although it is not so easy as it was thirty- 
five or even four years ago. There are signs of relaxation in 
the old and powerful hold of the leaders. American geological 
questions are no more the monopoly of a privileged few; and 
the confidence that those leaders as a general rule are right, has 
received so many and repeated shocks that if it were not for the 
complication, the ingeniousness and perfection of the machine 
(as it is called in politics), the whole would have fallen into 
pieces, and would have been for some time “part of the past.” 
At the present moment American geologists do not know ex¬ 
actly how to extricate themselves from their sad condition of 
ancient and total submission to unprincipled leaders, and they 
remain in statu quo fearing that a change would be for the 
