STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY 
149 
more elastic, and more comprehensive is offered should receive 
the full approbation of all those who have constructive taxonomy 
Keyes. 
Use of Chester as Terr anal Title. Recent proposal by Dr. E. 
O. Ulrich ^ to revive Worthen’s long discarded formational name 
Chester for a subdivision of the Early Carbonic rocks of the 
Mississippi Valley has many objections: (1) In this sense the 
section covered already has a well-defined and satisfactory title: 
(2) the name itself has valid application in another sense; (3) 
the usage of Worthen’s term in a somewhat different and more 
comprehensive meaning instead of clarifying the situation renders 
it all the more confusing; (4) the fact that the terrane to which 
the name Chester was first applied is today generally recognized 
as forming so desirable a distinctive unit is all the more reason 
for letting its original designation stand; (5) nothing is accom¬ 
plished, no advance in stratigraphy is gained, and no classificatory 
scheme is made better by such new use of Chester; (6) essential 
principles of taxonomy are invalidated; (7) fundamental canons 
of nomenclature are violated; (8) if such changes are to be per¬ 
mitted without protest our geological nomenclature must soon 
pass into chaos; (9) the implied assumption that such change to 
new meanings is scientific discovery is utterly without warrant; 
(10) the historical associations of the original title are visibly 
agitated and without sanction. 
First usage of the geographic name Chester in connection with 
a geological formation appears to be that by Swallow ^ in 1858, 
when he affixed ® this term to the heavy quarry sandstone capping 
the river bluff above the town of Chester, Illinois. Even recog¬ 
nizing this early application of the term Hall ^ already preceded 
Swallow by two years by giving the name Kaskaskia Limestone 
to the bluff section at Chester. Notwithstanding Worthen's claim, 
a decade afterwards,® to priority of his field title for the same sec¬ 
tion to which Hall designated the Kaskaskia, there is no doubt 
that Hall’s name must hold over all others because first published. 
1 U. S. Geol. Surv., Prof. Pap. 36, p. 24, 1905. 
2 Proposal of the title was by G. C. Swallow; not B. F. Shumard as stated by 
Weller, in Bull. 41, Illinois Geol. Surv., p. 209, 1920. 
3 Proc. American Assoc. Adv. Sci., Vol. XI, pt. 2, p. 5, 1858. 
4 Am. Jour. Sci. (2), Vol. XXIII, p. 193, 1856. 
5 Illinois Geol. Surv., Vol. I, p. 41, 1866. 
