Part 16

In regard to this great series of works, all that can be presented here is a table of formations as developed by the New York State Survey. Practically all of its results and formation names have come into general use, with the exception of the Taconic system of Emmons and the division terms of the New York system. (See p. 88.)

The New York State Survey, begun in 1836, was continued by James Hall from 1843 to 1898. During this time he was also state geologist of Iowa (1855–1858) and Michigan (1862). Since 1898, John M. Clarke has ably continued the Geological Survey of New York, the state which continues to be, in science and more especially in geology and paleontology, the foremost in America.

Western Extension of the New York system.—Before Hall finished his final report, we find him in 1841 on “a tour of exploration through the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, a part of Michigan, Kentucky, and Missouri, and the territories of Iowa and Wisconsin.” This tour is described in the Journal (=42=, 51, 1842) under the caption “Notes upon the Geology of the Western States.” His object was to ascertain how far the New York system as the standard of reference “was applicable in the western extension of the series.” In a general way he was very successful in extending the system to the Mississippi River, and he clearly saw “a great diminution, first of sandy matter, and next of shale, as we go westward, and in the whole, a great increase of calcareous matter in the same direction.” He also clearly noted the warped nature of the strata, the “anticlinal axis,” since known as the Cincinnati and Wabash uplifts and the Ozark dome.

Hall, however, fell into a number of flagrant errors because of a too great reliance on lithologic correlation and supposedly similar sequence. For instance, the Coal Measures of Pennsylvania were said to directly overlap the Chemung group of southern New York, and now he finds the same condition in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, failing to see that in most places between the top of the New York system and the Coal Measures lay the extensive Mississippian series, one that he generally confounded with the Chemung, or included in the “Carboniferous group.” He states that the Portage of New York is the same as the Waverly of Ohio, and at Louisville the Middle Devonian waterlime is correlated with the similar rock of the New York Silurian. Hall was especially desirous of fixing the horizon of the Middle Ordovician lead-bearing rocks of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, but unfortunately correlated them with the Niagaran, while the Middle Devonian about Columbus, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, he referred to the same horizon. The Galena-Niagaran error was corrected in 1855, but the Devonian and Mississippian ones remained unadjusted for a long time, and in Iowa until toward the close of the nineteenth century.

The Geological Column of the New York Geologists of 1842–1843, according to W. W. Mather 1842.

Quaternary system │Alluvial division. „ │Quaternary division. „ │Drift division. ────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┬──────────── Tertiary system │These strata are included in│ │ the next lower division. │ ────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼──────────── │Long Island division. Equals│New Red │ the Tertiary and │ system of Upper Secondary system │ Cretaceous marls, sands, │ Emmons and │ and clays of the coastal │ Hall. │ plain of New Jersey. │ „ │Trappean division. The │ „ │ Palisades │ „ │Red Sandstone division. │ „

Coal system of Mather, and Carboniferous system of Hall.

Old Red system of Catskill Mountains of Emmons; Catskill division of Mather and Hall; and Catskill group of Vanuxem.

According to Hall 1843, and essentially Vanuxem 1842.

│Chemung, Portage or Nunda (divided into │ Cashaqua, Gardeau, Portage), Genesee, Erie division [Devonian] │ Tully, Hamilton (divided into │ Ludlowville; Encrinal, Moscow), and │ Marcellus. ────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────── │Corniferous, Onondaga, Schoharie, Helderberg series │ Cauda-alli, Oriskany, Upper [Devonian-Silurian] │ Pentamerus, Encrinal, Delthyris, │ Pentamerus, Waterlime, Onondaga salt │ group. ────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────── Ontario division [Silurian] │Niagara, Clinton, and Medina. ────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────── │Oneida or Shawangunk, Grey sandstone, Champlain division │ Hudson River group, Utica, Trenton, [Silurian-Ordovician-Upper│ Black River including Birdseye and Cambrian] │ Chazy, Calciferous sandrock, and │ Potsdam.

According to Emmons 1842, Mather 1843, Vanuxem 1842, Hall 1843.

Taconic System [Ordovician │Granular quartz, Stockbridge limestone, and Lower Cambrian] │ Magnesian slate, and Taconic slate. ────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────── Primary or Hypogene system │Metamorphic and Primary rocks.

Correlations with Europe.—The first effort toward correlating the New York system with those of Europe was made by Conrad in his Notes on American Geology in 1839 (=35=, 243). Here he compares it on faunal grounds with the Silurian system. A more sustained effort was that of Hall in 1843 (=45=, 157), when he said that the Silurian of Murchison was equal to the New York system and embraced the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian, which he considered as forming but one system. Hall in 1844 and Conrad earlier were erroneously regarding the Middle Devonian of New York (Hamilton) as “an equivalent of the Ludlow rocks of Mr. Murchison” (=47=, 118, 1844).

In 1846 E. P. De Verneuil spent the summer in America with a view to correlating the formations of the New York system with those of Europe. At this time he had had a wide field experience in France, Germany, and Russia, was president of the Geological Society of France, and “virtually the representative of European geology” (=2=, 153, 1846). Hall says, “No other person could have presented so clear and perfect a coup d’oeil.” De Verneuil’s results were translated by Hall and with his own comments were published in the Journal in 1848 and 1849 under the title “On the Parallelism of the Paleozoic Deposits of North America with those of Europe.” De Verneuil was especially struck with the complete development of American Paleozoic deposits and said it was the best anywhere. On the other hand, he did not agree with the detailed arrangement of the formations in the various divisions of the New York system, and Hall admitted altogether too readily that the terms were proposed “as a matter of concession, and it is to be regretted that such an artificial classification was adopted.” De Verneuil’s correlations are as follows:

The Lower Silurian system begins with the Potsdam, the analogue of the Obolus sandstone of Russia and Sweden. The Black River and Trenton hold the position of the Orthoceras limestones of Sweden and Russia, while the Utica and Lorraine are represented by the Graptolite beds of the same countries. Both correlations are in partial error. He unites the Chazy, Birdseye, and Black River in one series, and in another the Trenton, Utica, and Lorraine. Of species common to Europe and America he makes out seventeen.

In the Upper Silurian system, the Oneida and Shawangunk are taken out of the Champlain division, and, with the Medina, are referred to the Silurian, along with all of the Ontario division plus the Lower Helderberg. The Clinton is regarded as highest Caradoc or as holding a stage between that and the Wenlock. The Niagara group is held to be the exact equivalent of the Wenlock, “while the five inferior groups of the Helderberg division represent the rocks of Ludlow.” We now know that these Helderberg formations are Lower Devonian in age. De Verneuil unites in one series the Waterlime, Pentamerus, Delthyris, Encrinal, and Upper Pentamerus. Of identical species there are forty common to Europe and America.

The Devonian system De Verneuil begins, “after much hesitation,” with the Oriskany and certainly with the five upper members of Hall’s Helderberg division, all of the Erie and the Old Red Sandstone. He also adjusts Hall’s error by placing in the Devonian the Upper Cliff limestone of Ohio and Indiana, regarded by the former as Silurian. The Oriskany is correlated with the grauwackes of the Rhine, and the Onondaga or Corniferous with the lower Eifelian. Cauda-galli, Schoharie, and Onondaga are united in one series; Marcellus, Hamilton, Tully, and Genesee in another; and Portage and Chemung in a third. Of species common to Europe and America there are thirty-nine.

The Waverly of Ohio and that near Louisville, Kentucky, which Hall had called Chemung, De Verneuil correctly refers to the Carboniferous, but to this Hall does not consent. De Verneuil points out that there are thirty-one species in common between Europe and America. “And as to plants, the immense quantity of terrestrial species identical on the two sides of the Atlantic, proves that the coal was formed in the neighborhood of lands already emerged, and placed in similar physical conditions.”

An analysis of the Paleozoic fossils of Europe and America leads De Verneuil to “the conviction that identical species have lived at the same epoch in America and in Europe, that they have had nearly the same duration, and that they succeeded each other in the same order.” This he states is independent of the depth of the seas, and of “the upheavings which have affected the surface of the globe.” The species of a period begin and drop out at different levels, and toward the top of a system the whole takes on the character of the next one. “If it happens that in the two countries a certain number of systems, characterized by the same fossils, are superimposed in the same order, whatever may be, otherwise, their thickness and the number of physical groups of which they are composed, it is philosophical to consider these systems as parallel and synchronous.”

Because of the dominance of the sandstones and shales in eastern New York, De Verneuil holds that a land lay to the east. The many fucoids and ripple-marks from the Potsdam to the Portage indicated to him shallow water and nearness to a shore.

The Oldest Geologic Eras.—We have seen in previous pages how the Primitive rocks of Arduino and of Werner had been resolved, at least in part, into the systems of the Paleozoic, but there still remained many areas of ancient rocks that could not be adjusted into the accepted scheme. One of the most extensive of these is in Canada, where the really Primitive formations, of granites, gneisses, schists, and even undetermined sediments, abound and are developed on a grander scale than elsewhere, covering more than two million square miles and overlain unconformably by the Paleozoic and later rocks. The first to call attention to them was J. I. Bigsby, a medical staff officer of the British Army, in 1821 (=3=, 254). It was, however, William E. Logan (1798–1875), the “father of Canadian geology,” who first unravelled their historical sequence. At first he also called them Primary, but after much work he perceived in them parallel structures and metamorphosed sediments, underlain by and associated with pink granites. For the oldest masses, essentially the granites, he proposed the term Laurentian system (1853, 1863) and for the altered and deformed strata, the name Huronian series (1857, 1863). Overlying these unconformably was a third series, the copper-bearing rocks. Since his day a great host of Canadian and American geologists have labored over this, the most intricate of all geology, and now we have the following tentative chronology (Schuchert and Barrell, =38=, 1, 1914):

Late Proterozoic era. Keweenawan, Animikian and Huronian periods. Early Proterozoic era. Sudburian period or older Huronian. Archeozoic era. Grenville series, etc. Cosmic history.

The Taconic System Resurrected.

The Taconic system was first announced by Ebenezer Emmons in 1841, and clearly defined in 1842. It started the most bitter and most protracted discussion in the annals of American geology. After Emmons’s subsequent publications had put the Taconic system through three phases, Barrande of Bohemia in 1860–1863 shed a great deal of new and correct light upon it, affirming in a series of letters to Billings that the Taconic fossils are like those of his Primordial system, or what we now call the Middle Cambrian (=31=, 210, 1861, et seq.).

In a series of articles published by S. W. Ford in the Journal between 1871 and 1886, there was developed the further new fact that in Rensselaer and Columbia counties, New York, the so-called Hudson River group abounds in “Primordial” fossils wholly unlike those of the Potsdam, and which Ford later on spoke of as belonging to “Lower Potsdam” time.

James D. Dana entered the field of the Taconic area in 1871 and demonstrated that the system also abounds in Ordovician fossiliferous formations. Then came the far-reaching work of Charles D. Walcott, beginning in 1886, which showed that all through eastern New York and into northern Vermont the Hudson River group and the Taconic system abound not only in Ordovician but also in Cambrian fossils. Finally in 1888 Dana presented a Brief History of Taconic Ideas, and laid away the system with these words (=36=, 27):

“It is almost fifty years since the Taconic system made its abrupt entrance into geological science. Notwithstanding some good points, it has been through its greater errors, long a hindrance to progress here and abroad ... But, whether the evil or the good has predominated, we may now hope, while heartily honoring Professor Emmons for his earnest geological labors and his discoveries, that Taconic ideas may be allowed to be and remain part of the past.”

As an epitaph Dana placed over the remains of the Taconic system the black-faced numerals =1841–1888=. That the remains of the system, however, and the term Taconic are still alive and demanding a rehearing is apparent to all interested stratigraphers. This is not the place to set the matter right, and all that can be done at the present time is to point out what are the things that still keep alive Emmons’s system.