320 
GEOLOGICAL CRITICISM 
ping are really in strict accord with the old, discarded and un¬ 
tenable Wernerian principles. It is the dark corner in modern 
geology. It is a feature which holds over from a bye-gone age. 
A century and a half ago the correlative methods employed would 
have been eminently proper; but today they are far out of fashion. 
Nowhere do we find them in keeping with modern schemes of 
terranal classification. As one field-worker astutely observes, 
after the elapse of half a century, the taxonomy of our pre-Cam¬ 
brian rocks remains almost in the same chaotic state as when they 
were first made known. 
Few of the International travellers just alluded to had ever 
seen so deeply into the oldest stratified rocks in so short a time, 
under such favorable circumstances, or under happier guidance. 
Some of the participants in these proceedings preeminent in other 
fields of stratigraphic endeavor, seemed to see in this old American 
complex an exact counterpart of conditions that were presented 
a century ago by the Primary (Paleozoic) masses when they 
were awaiting the magic touch of the English geologists to unfold 
the then inextricable maze. 
Between the two-century-apart problems there is one marked 
difference. In America there appears to be in place of only one 
grand succession of formations two vast piles of eral rank, either 
one of which very greatly surpasses in magnitude and span of 
time the entire Paleozoic sequence with which Murchison, Sedg¬ 
wick and Lonsdale had to deal. And still beyond lies an Eozoic 
Era which perhaps is forever hidden from prying eyes. 
