STRATIGRAPHY AND STRUCTURE CASTLETON AREA VERMONT

shale and limestone and the Eagle Bridge quartzite (Zion Hill quartzite)
into the Schodack formation ...... Ruedemann appears not to have
followed Resser's view, for in 1943 Goldring (p. 64) used the name
Schodack formation "as extended by Ruedemann to include all members
associated or even interbedded with it from the Bomoseen grit through
the Zion Hill quartzite." Under this usage the Schodack formation
includes as a member the Schodack shale and limestone. If this usage
should be followed in the Castleton area, the Bomoseen, Mettawee,
Eddy Hill, Schodack shale and limestone, and Zion Hill would make
up the Schodack formation. But the Cambrian subcommittee (Howell
et al., 1944, Chart) showed the Bomoseen formation as underlying the
Schodack formation. There are, therefore, two current usages of the
name Schodack formation. One includes the Bomoseen; the other does
not.
All this is most confusing. Rules of nomenclature have been violated.
Furthermore, these things have been done with a disregard for their
possible repercussions in the slate belt. If it is desired to include all the
Olenellus-bearing beds under one term, such term should be a new group
name. No reason exists in the type area, the slate belt, for changing
names, and I reject the revised Schodack formation. In this report the
Schodack formation will be used as defined by Dale and renamed by
Cushing and Ruedemann.
Distribution: The Schodack crops out in several narrow north-trending
bands in the slate belt west of the Taconic Range and south of the Castleton
River. North of the Castleton River Kaiser (1945) mapped large
outcrops of Schodack both in and west of the Taconic Range in the townships
of Castleton, Hubbardton, and Ira. Some of the Schodack mapped
by Kaiser on the eastern flank of the Taconic Range in Pittsford is
here called Hortonville slate, which lies beneath the Taconic overthrust.
Description: This rock is a rusty-weathering, thin-bedded, jet black,
bluish black, blue-gray, and gray slate with many thin limestone beds.
Tough, fine-grained, thick-bedded, black fossiliferous limestones bearing
white calcite veins are found commonly in the slates near the bottom of
the formation. Blue limestone conglomerates like those in the uppermost
Mettawee occasionally occupy the base of the Schodack. Very thin white
quartzite laminae and some calcareous sandstone beds were observed.
Pyrite is very common in the slate; its decomposition causes the charac-
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