184 Bar ramie and the Taconic System — Marcou. 
original Taconic area, is certainly a system which is not to be 
despised and passed over. 
So the words, “none of them (the Taconic rocks of the Ta¬ 
conic range) older than the Potsdam,” as his result of “nearly 
ten years of study in the Taconic region,” are anything but 
creditable to one calling himself an original investigator. 
As to his “no horizon of un conform ability at any place in the 
series between the quartzite and the top of the Lower Silurian,” 
it is even more, if possible, in discord with the results arrived at 
by his associate, Mr. Walcott, who gives in the only section he 
has published of the original Taconic area, no less than fifteen 
cases of uncomformability by faults. 
Not being sure that his letter to von Dechen would insure the 
suppression of the Taconic system, as he intended it to, Mr. 
Dana succeeded, after one year of hard struggle, in drawing to 
his side Mr. Walcott of the United States Geological Survey. 
Only if he has succeeded with Mr. Walcott, there is an element 
most essential in the question, on which he has not made the 
smallest impression; I refer to the rocks themselves, which re¬ 
main there in the Taconic area, exposed every day to the full 
light of day. Nobody can monopolize them and keep many 
thousand square miles of Taconic rocks shut up in drawers of 
collections, or inclosed in the series of volumes of the American 
Journal of Science . 
Opposition, omission, use of erroneous classification and no¬ 
menclature for geological maps, sections and memoirs will come 
to an end. The sort of revival given to the adversaries of the 
Taconic by the defection of Mr. Walcott will not last long. 
Careful surveys in the Taconic and Champlain original areas 
will put promptly an end to that face about ( volte-face ). The 
course taken by Mr. Walcott will do him more harm than any 
one else, and it will not affect the final result; for to try to 
break down and destroy the national record of American geol¬ 
ogy, is an herculean task, far above the power of any man or 
combination of men. It will hurt neither the Taconic system 
nor Dr. Emmons nor Barrande, nor Dewalque, nor Marcou. I 
have full hope in the future; the rights of American geology 
will be recognized and accepted, and the time will come when 
the Taconic system of Dr. Emmons will be used on all the con¬ 
tinents, and will contribute the foundation and the first step of 
the geological nomenclature of the world. 
