266 
PALEONTOLOGICAL GEOLOGY 
his great volume of 1843. He was indeed, as McGee called him, 
the Founder of American Stratigraphy. And we are not using 
this term in the same sense as is commonly employed in referring 
to the much earlier work of William Smith, to whom must for¬ 
ever go the honor of establishing identity of geological chronology 
by identity of fossils. The present school of students of sedimen¬ 
tation which is disposed to weigh more carefully new found dis¬ 
tinctions in lithology regardless of fossils, will do well to read over 
the volume referred to and see how far^Hall opened the door to 
this phase of the modern science. In paleontology Hall ever kept 
the geological side of the science uppermost; from its beginnings 
on to near the end of his life, its purpose was never philosophical 
though importantly biological, but fundamentally the establish¬ 
ment, through profusion of evidence, of the New York series of 
Geological Formations. 
“To those who have pursued geological science after the mode 
of Hall’s days, who have continued to regard the study of the 
ancient simple life of the earth, its relation to the seas and the 
lands, its lights upon the revolutions in our geography, the influ¬ 
ence of the man and his work is still a living factor and must con¬ 
tinue to be, as his seed has been sown on good soil and has pro¬ 
duced a vast harvest.” 
Keyes 
Biotic Taxonomy of Comanche Succession. Review ^ of the 
paleontology and stratigraphy of the Dakota sandstone and its 
associated formations on the Great Plains between central Texas 
and the Black Hills, and along the Rocky Mountains front from 
Mexico to Canada, leads to the conclusion that there is no proper 
boundary between two geologic systems either at the base or at 
the top of the Dakota formation. The relationship with the Co¬ 
manche beds in Kansas, southern Colorado, and eastern New 
Mexico, and with the overlying Cretacic rocks throughout its ex¬ 
tent is too intimate. It is true that the Comanche fauna as a whole 
is very disinct from the later Cretacic fauna as a whole, but the 
change from the Kiowa, or Denison, fauna to the Woodbine fauna, 
or from the Woodbine fauna to the Benton fauna shows little 
if any greater contrast than that which exists between the Niobrara 
2 Ibid., p. 549. 
1 Full discussion of “Some Problems Connected with the Dakota Sandstone,” 
forming the Presidential Address before the Paleontological Society, will be found in 
the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, volume xxxiii, pages 255 to 272, 
1922. 
