ORGANIC REMAINS OF THE TACONIC SYSTEM. 
Dr. Emmons, in his paper on the Taconic System, and in his Agricultural Report, has 
given several plates of fossils of the Taconic system, with descriptions of the same. The 
larger number of these are from the State of Maine ; and since the relative position of the 
rocks containing them has not been shown upon geological evidence, nor any fossils from 
them identified with those of rocks of the [presumed] same age in New-York, I have thought 
it better to omit any notice of them in this volume. Of those found within the State of 
New-York, several are unequivocally identical with well known species in the Hudson- 
river group, while a single species is yet unknown in that position. 
The Trilobites are figured on Plate LXVII, and described at pages 252 and 256 of this 
Report. One of these is new, while the other is unquestionably the Calymene beckii. 
The JVemapodia has since been shown, by Dr. Fitch, to be the track or discoloration on 
the surface, produced by some existing animal. 
The Gordia marina presents no evidence of organic structure, having more the ap¬ 
pearance of the cast of a furrow made by some mollusk upon a soft bottom, which was 
afterwards filled with sediment, producing the form under consideration. 
The JYereites and Myrianites , figured on Plates III and IV, Tac. System (Plates XV and 
XVI, Agr. Report ), are, as before observed, from the slates of Waterville in Maine, the 
age and relative position of which has not been shown upon other evidence. 
The Fucoides simplex is undoubtedly a Graptolite , allied to G. foliaceus, and apparently 
identical with a species in the unaltered slates of the Hudson-river group. 
The Fucoides rigida and F. jlexuosa are one and the same species ; but their locality 
leaves no doubt that the rocks in which they occur are a part of the Hudson-river group. 
A species, undistinguishable from this one, occurs in the unaltered shales of the Hudson- 
river group at Turin in Lewis county, though such variable forms are not to be regarded 
as of cardinal importance. Even if this prove a distinct species, it is generically identical 
with others from authentic localities of the Hudson-river group, and is therefore of little 
value as typifying rocks of a distinct system. Such an argument, however, if available in 
this case, may be used in another ; for the two species of Sphenothallus (PI. LXVIII) are not 
associated with other known fossils, but are clearly in strata of the Utica slate and Hudson- 
river group. The only difference in the case of those in Washington county, is that the 
rocks have suffered a few undulations and plications, with scarcely any visible change in 
their lithological character. 
