Chapter XII: A Century of Zoology in America. Wesley R. Coe 391 (3)

_Cosmogonists._—Then came the expounders of the earth’s origin, the cosmogonists of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth centuries. The fashion of this time was to write histories of the earth derived out of the imagination.

_Earliest Historical Geology._—Even though Giovanni Arduino (1713–1795) of Padua was not the first to classify the rocks into three series according to their age, he did this more clearly than any one else before his time. The rocks about Verona he grouped in 1759 into Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Volcanic. This three-fold classification came into general use, though modified with time.

Early in the nineteenth century it had become plain that formations of very varying ages were included in each one of the three series. Through the study of the fossils and the recognition of the fact that mountain ranges have been raised at various times, causing younger fossiliferous strata to take on the characters of the Primary, it was seen that these terms of Arduino had lost their original significance.

The first one to describe in detail a local stratigraphic sequence was Johann Gottlob Lehmann (died 1767). In 1756 he published “one of the classics of geological literature,” distinguishing clearly thirty successive sedimentary deposits, some of which he said had fossils, but he did not use them to distinguish the strata.

What Lehmann did for the Permian system, George Christian Füchsel (1722–1773) did even better for the Triassic of Thuringia, in 1762 and 1773. He pointed out not only the sequence, but also how the gently inclined strata rest upon the older upturned masses of the mountains; also that some formations have only marine fossils, while others have only terrestrial forms and thus indicate the proximity of land. The deformed strata he thought had fallen into the hollows within the earth, great caverns that had also consumed much of the oceanic waters and had in so doing greatly lowered the sea-level. It was Füchsel who first introduced the theory of universal formations, and who defined the term formation, using it as we now do, system or period. Even though Lehmann and Füchsel showed that there was a definite order and process in the formation of the earth’s crust, their example was barren of followers until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

_Wernerian Geology or Geognosy._—We come now to the time of Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817), who from 1775 to 1817 was professor of mining and mineralogy in the Freiberg Academy of Mines. Geikie, in his most interesting Founders of Geology, says that Werner “bulks far more largely in the history of geology than any of those with whom up to the present we have been concerned—a man who wielded an enormous authority over the mineralogy and geology of his day.” “Although he did great service by the precision of his lithological characters and by his insistence on the doctrine of geological succession, yet as regards geological theory, whether directly by his own teaching, or indirectly by the labors of his pupils and followers, much of his influence was disastrous to the higher interests of geology.”

Werner arranged the crust of the earth into a series of formations, as had been done previously by Lehmann and Füchsel, and one of his fundamental postulates was that all rocks were chemically precipitated in the ocean as “universal formations.” For this reason Werner’s school were called the Neptunists. Nowhere, however, did he explain how and where the deep and primitive ocean had disappeared.

According to Werner, the first formed or oldest rocks were the chemically deposited Primitive strata, including granite and other igneous and metamorphic rocks. On these followed the Transition rocks, the earliest sediments of mechanical origin, and above them the Floetz rocks, a term for the horizontal stratified rocks. These last he said were partly of chemical but chiefly of mechanical origin. Last of all came the Alluvial series.

The existence of volcanoes had been pointed out long before Werner’s time by the Italian school of geologists, but as for “the universality and potency of what is now termed igneous action,” all was “brushed aside by the oracle of Freiberg.” Reactions between the interior and exterior of our earth “were utterly antagonistic to Werner’s conception of the structure and history of the earth.” To him, volcanoes were “burning mountains” that arose from the combustion of subterranean beds of coal, spontaneously ignited.

The breaking down of the Wernerian doctrines began with two of Werner’s most distinguished pupils, D’Aubuisson de Voisins (1769–1819) and Von Buch. The former in 1803 had accepted Werner’s aqueous origin of basalt, but after studying the celebrated and quite recent volcanic area of Auvergne he recanted in 1804. Here he saw the basaltic rocks lying upon and cutting through granite, and in places more than 1200 feet thick. “If these basaltic rocks were lavas,” says Geikie, “they must, according to the Wernerian doctrine, have resulted from the combustion of beds of coal. But how could coal be supposed to exist under granite, which was the first chemical precipitate of a primeval ocean?”

Leopold von Buch (1774–1853), “the most illustrious geologist that Germany has produced,” after two years spent in Norway was satisfied “that the rocks in the Christiania district could not be arranged according to the Wernerian plan, which there completely broke down. Von Buch found a mass of granite lying among fossiliferous limestones which were manifestly metamorphosed, and were pierced by veins of granite, porphyry, and syenite.” Even so, he was not ready to abandon the teachings of his master. After a study of the mountain systems of Germany, however, “he declared that the more elevated mountains had never been covered by the sea, as Werner had taught, but were produced by successive ruptures and uplifts of the terrestrial crust” (Geikie).

_Rise of Geology and Conformism._—Modern geology has its rise in James Hutton (1726–1797) of Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1785 and 1795, Hutton published his Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations. His “immortal theory” is his only work on geology. “Fortunately for Hutton’s fame and for the onward march of geology, the philosopher numbered among his friends the illustrious mathematician and natural philosopher, John Playfair (1748–1819), who had been closely associated with him in his later years, and was intimately conversant with his geological opinions.” In 1802, Playfair published his Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, of which Geikie says, “Of this great classic it is impossible to speak too highly,” as it is at the basis of all modern geology.

One of Hutton’s fundamental doctrines is that the earth is internally hot and that in the past large masses of molten material, the granites, have been intruded into the crust. It was these igneous views that led to his followers being called the Plutonists. Another of his great doctrines was that “the ruins of an earlier world lie beneath the secondary strata,” and that they are separated by what is now known as unconformity. He clearly recognized a lost interval in the broken relation of the structures, and that the ruins, the detrital materials, of one world after another are superposed in the structure of the earth.

Hutton also held that the deformation of once horizontally deposited strata was probably brought about at different periods by great convulsions that shook the very foundations of the earth. After a convulsion, there was a long time of erosion, represented by the unconformity. Geikie says, “The whole of the modern doctrine of earth sculpture is to be found in the Huttonian theory.”

The Lyellian doctrine of metamorphism had its origin in Hutton, for he showed that invading igneous granite had altered, through its heat and expanding power, the originally waterlaid sediments, and that the schists of the Alps had been born of the sea like other stratified rocks.

Hutton is the father of the Uniformitarian principle, for he “started with the grand conception that the past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now, or to have happened only recently. The dominant idea in his philosophy is that the present is the key to the past.” This principle has been impressed on all later geologists by Sir Charles Lyell, and is the chief cornerstone of modern geology.

The principle of uniformitarianism has underlain geologic interpretation since the days of Hutton, Playfair, and Lyell. However, it is often applied too rigidly in interpretations based upon the present conditions, because in the past there were long times when the topographic features of the earth were very different from those of to-day. Throughout the Paleozoic, and, less markedly, the Mesozoic, the oceans flooded the lands widely (at times over 60 per cent of the total area), highlands were inconspicuous, sediments far scarcer, and climates warm and equable throughout the world. Highland conditions, and especially the broadly emergent continents of the present, were only periodically present in the Paleozoic and then for comparatively short intervals between the periods. Therefore rates of denudation, solution, sedimentation, and evolution have varied greatly throughout the geological ages. These differences, however, relate to degrees of operation, and not to kinds of processes; but the differences in degree of operation react mightily on our views as to the age of the earth.

Geologic time had, for Hutton, no “vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” In other words, geologic time is infinite. He did not, however, discover a method by which the chronology of the earth could be determined.

_First Important Text-books._—In 1822 appeared the ablest text-book so far published, and the pattern for most of the later ones, Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, by W. D. Conybeare (1787–1857) and W. Phillips (1775–1828). “In this excellent volume all that was then known regarding the rocks of the country, from the youngest formations down to the Old Red Sandstone, was summarized in so clear and methodical a manner as to give a powerful impulse to the cultivation of geology in England” (Geikie). This book is reviewed at great length by Edward Hitchcock in the Journal (=7=, 203, 1824).

To indicate how far historical geology had progressed up to 1822 in England, a digest of the geological column as presented in this text-book is given in the following table, along with other information.

A text-book writer of yet greater influence was Charles Lyell (1797–1875), whose Principles of Geology appeared in three volumes between 1830 and 1833. This and his other books were kept up to date through many editions, and his Elements of Geology is, as Geikie says, “the hand book of every English geologist” working with the fossiliferous formations.

_The Rise of Geology in North America._

_The Generating Centers._—In America, geology had its rise independently in three places: in the two scientific societies of Boston and Philadelphia, and dominantly in Benjamin Silliman of Yale College. Stated in another way, we may say that geology in America had its origin in the following pioneers and founders: first, in William Maclure at Philadelphia, and next in Benjamin Silliman at New Haven. Through the influence of the latter, Amos Eaton, the botanist, became a geologist and taught geology at Williams College and later at the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York. Through the same influence Rev. Edward Hitchcock also became a geologist and taught the subject after 1825 at Amherst College.

Silliman was the first to take up actively the teaching of mineralogy and geology based on collections of specimens. He spread the knowledge in popular lectures throughout the Eastern States, graduated many a student in the sciences, making of some of them professional teachers and geologists, provided all with a journal wherein they could publish their research, organized the first geological society and through his students the first official geological surveys, and by kind words and acts stimulated, fostered, and held together American scientific men for fifty years. Of him it has been truly said that he was “the guardian of American science from its childhood.”

_The American Academy in Boston._—The second oldest scientific society, but the first one to publish on geological subjects, was the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston, instituted and publishing since 1780. Up to the time of the founding of this Journal, there had appeared in the publications of the American Academy about a dozen papers of a geologic character, none of which need to be mentioned here excepting one by S. L. and J. F. Dana, entitled “Outlines of the Mineralogy and Geology of Boston,” published in 1818. This is an early and important step in the elucidation of one of the most intricate geologic areas, and is further noteworthy for its geologic map, the third one to appear, the older ones being by Maclure and Hitchcock (Merrill).

THE GEOLOGICAL COLUMN IN 1822

═══════════════════════════════════╤═════════════╤═════════════
Present American classification │Conybeare and│ C. & P.
│Phillips 1822│ orders
───────────────────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
│ │ Superior
Psychozoic or Recent │Alluvial │ Order
│ │
───────────┬───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Cenozoic │Pleistocene │Diluvial │ „
│ │ │Upper Marine │
│ │ │ formation │
│ │ │ (Crag, │
„ │Pliocene │Neogene │ Bagshot │ „
│ │ │ sand, and │
│ │ │ Isle of │
│ │ │ Wight) │
„ │Miocene │ „ │ „ │ „
„ │ │Fresh-water │ „
│ │ formations │
„ │Oligocene │Paleogene │London Clay │ „
„ │Eocene │ „ │Plastic Clay │ „
───────────┼────────────┴──────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
│ │ │
│ │ │ Supermedial
Mesozoic │Cretaceous │Chalk │ Order
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │Beds between │
│ │ Chalk and │
│ │ Oolite │
│ │ Series │
„ │Comanchian 1887 │ (Chalk │ „
│ │ Marle, │
│ │ Green Sand,│
│ │ Weald Clay,│
│ │ Iron Sand) │
───────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
│ │Upper Oolitic│
│ │ division │
│ │ (Purbeck │
„ │Jurassic 1829 │ beds, │ „
│ │ Portland │
│ │ Oolite, │
│ │ Kimmeridge │
│ │ Clay) │
│ │Middle │
│ │ Oolitic │
„ │ „ │ division │ „
│ │ (Coral Rag,│
│ │ Oxford │
│ │ Clay) │
│ │Lower Oolitic│
│ │ division │
│ │ (Cornbrash │
│ │ Stonesfield│
│ │ Slate, │
│ │ Forest │
│ │ Marble, │
„ │ „ │ Great │ „
│ │ Oolite, │
│ │ Fullers’ │
│ │ Earth, │
│ │ Inferior │
│ │ Oolite, │
│ │ Sand and │
│ │ Marlestone)│
„ │ „ │Lias │ „
───────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
„ │Triassic 1834 │New Red │ „
│ │ Sandstone │
───────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Paleozoic │Permian 1841 │Magnesian │ „
│ │ Limestone │
───────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
│ │ │ Medial or
„ │ │Coal Measures│Carboniferous
│ │ │ Order
„ │Pennsylvanian 1891 │ │ „
│ │Millstone │
„ │Mississippian 1869 │ Grit and │ „
│ │ Shale │
„ │ │Old Red │ „
│ │ Sandstone │
„ │Devonian 1839 │ │ „
───────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
│ │Unresolved │
│ │ Submedial │
„ │Silurian 1835 │ and │
│ │ Inferior │
│ │ Orders │
„ │Ordovician 1879 │ „ │
„ │(=Lower Silurian 1835) │ „ │
„ │Cambrian 1833 │ „ │
───────────┼────────────┬──────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Proterozoic│Keweenawan │Huronian │ „ │
│ │ 1852 │ │
„ │Animikian │ „ │ „ │
„ │Huronian │ „ │ „ │
„ │Sudburian │ „ │ „ │
───────────┼────────────┼──────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Archeozoic │Keewatin │Laurentian│ „ │
│ │ 1853 │ │
„ │Coutchiching│ „ │ „ │
───────────┴────────────┴──────────┴─────────────┴─────────────

═══════════════════════════════════╤══════════╤════════════
Present American classification │Wernerian │ Other
│ orders │ writers
───────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
│ Newest │ Tertiary
Psychozoic or Recent │ Floetz │ Class
│ Class │
───────────┬───────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
Cenozoic │Pleistocene │ „ │ „
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
„ │Pliocene │Neogene │ „ │ „
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
„ │Miocene │ „ │ „ │ „
„ │ │ „ │ „
│ │ │
„ │Oligocene │Paleogene │ „ │ „
„ │Eocene │ „ │ „ │ „
───────────┼────────────┴──────────┼──────────┼────────────
│ │Primitive │ Primitive
│ │Transition│Intermediate
Mesozoic │Cretaceous │and Floetz│ and
│ │ Classes │ Secondary
│ │ │ classes
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │Comanchian 1887 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
───────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │Jurassic 1829 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │ „ │ „ │ „
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │ „ │ „ │ „
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │ „ │ „ │ „
───────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
„ │Triassic 1834 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
───────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
Paleozoic │Permian 1841 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
───────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
│ │ │
„ │ │ „ │ „
│ │ │
„ │Pennsylvanian 1891 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
„ │Mississippian 1869 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
„ │ │ „ │ „
│ │ │
„ │Devonian 1839 │ „ │ „
───────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │Silurian 1835 │ „ │ „
│ │ │
│ │ │
„ │Ordovician 1879 │ „ │ „
„ │(=Lower Silurian 1835) │ „ │ „
„ │Cambrian 1833 │ „ │ „
───────────┼────────────┬──────────┼──────────┼────────────
Proterozoic│Keweenawan │Huronian │ „ │ „
│ │ 1852 │ │
„ │Animikian │ „ │ „ │ „
„ │Huronian │ „ │ „ │ „
„ │Sudburian │ „ │ „ │ „
───────────┼────────────┼──────────┼──────────┼────────────
Archeozoic │Keewatin │Laurentian│ „ │ „
│ │ 1853 │ │
„ │Coutchiching│ „ │ „ │ „
───────────┴────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴────────────

_Early Geology in Philadelphia._—The oldest scientific society is the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, started by the many-sided Benjamin Franklin in 1769, and which has published since 1771. Up to the time of the founding of the Journal in 1818, there had appeared in the publications of this society thirteen papers of a geologic nature, nearly all small building stones in the rising geologic story of North America. The only fundamental ones were Maclure’s Observations of 1809 and 1817. Later, in this same city, there was organized another scientific society that came to be for a long time the most active one in America. This was the Academy of Natural Sciences, started in 1812 with seven members, but it was not until 1817 and the election of William Maclure as its first president that the work of the Academy was of a far-reaching character. Here was built up not only a society for the advancement of the natural sciences and publications for the dissemination of such knowledge, but, what is equally important, the first large library and general museum.

William Maclure (1763–1840), correctly named by Silliman the “father of American geology,” was born and educated in Scotland, and died near Mexico City. A merchant of London until 1796, when he had already amassed “a considerable fortune,” he made a first short visit to New York City in 1782. In 1796 he again came to America, this time to become a citizen of this country and a liberal patron of science.

About 1803, single-handed and unsustained by government patronage, Maclure interested himself most zealously and efficiently in American geology. In 1809 he published his Observations on the Geology of the United States, Explanatory of a Geological Map. This work he revised “on a yet more extended scale,” issuing it in 1817 with 130 pages of text, accompanied by a large colored geological map.

_Silliman, the Pioneer Promoter of Geology._—In 1806 when Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864) began actively to teach chemistry and mineralogy, all the sciences in America were in a very backward state, and the earth sciences were not recognized as such in the curricula of any of our colleges. Silliman gave his first lecture in chemistry on April 4, 1804. In the summer of that year, Yale College asked him to go to England to purchase material for the College, and great possibilities for broadening his knowledge now loomed before him. As Silliman himself (=43=, 225, 1842) has told the interesting story of his sojourn in England and Scotland, it is worth while to restate a part of it here.

“Passing over to England in the spring of 1805, and fixing my
residence for six months in London, I found there no school, public or
private, for geological instruction, and no association for the
cultivation of the science, which was not even named in the English
universities.” In geology “Edinburgh was then far in advance of
London.... Prof. Jameson having recently returned from the school of
Werner, fully instructed in the doctrines of his illustrious teacher,
was ardently engaged to maintain them, and his eloquent and acute
friend, the late Dr. John Murray, was a powerful auxiliary in the same
cause; both of these philosophers strenuously maintaining the
ascendancy of the aqueous over the igneous agencies, in the geological
phenomena of our planet.

On the other hand, the disciples and friends of Dr. Hutton were not
less active. He died in 1797, and his mantle fell upon Sir James Hall,
who, with Prof. Playfair and Prof. Thomas Hope, maintained with signal
ability, the igneous theory of Hutton. It did not become one who was
still a youth and a novice, to enter the arena of the geological
tournament where such powerful champions waged war; but it was very
interesting to view the combat, well sustained as it was on both
sides, and protracted, without a decisive issue, into a drawn
battle....

The conflicts of the rival schools of Edinburgh—the Neptunists and the
Vulcanists, the Wernerians and the Huttonians, were sustained with
great zeal, energy, talent, and science; they were indeed marked too
decidedly by a partisan spirit, but this very spirit excited untiring
activity in discovering, arranging, and criticising the facts of
geology. It was a transition period between the epoch of geological
hypotheses and dreams, which had passed by, and the era of strict
philosophical induction, in which the geologists of the present day
are trained....

I was a diligent and delighted listener to the discussions of both
schools. Still the igneous philosophers appeared to me to assume more
than had been proved regarding internal heat. In imagination we were
plunged into a fiery Phlegethon, and I was glad to find relief in the
cold bath of the Wernerian ocean, where my predilections inclined me
to linger.”

_Silliman’s Students and Their Publications._—Silliman’s first student to take up geology as a profession was Denison Olmstead (1791–1859), educator, chemist, and geologist, who was graduated from Yale in 1813. Four years later he was under special preparation with Silliman in mineralogy and geology, and in that year was appointed professor of chemistry in the University of North Carolina. In 1824–1825 Olmstead issued a Report on the Geology of North Carolina, which is the first official geological report issued by any state in America, “a conspicuous and solitary instance,” according to Hitchcock’s review of it (=14=, 230, 1828), “in which any of our state governments have undertaken thoroughly to develop their mineral resources.”

Amos Eaton (1776–1842), lawyer, botanist, surveyor, and one of the founders of American geology, was a graduate of Williams College in the class of 1799. He studied with Silliman in 1815, attending his lectures on chemistry, geology, and mineralogy. He also enjoyed access to the libraries of Silliman and of the botanist, Levi Ives, in which works on botany and materia medica were prominent, and was a diligent student of the College cabinet of minerals. He settled as a lawyer and land agent in Catskill, New York, and here in 1810 he gave a popular course of lectures on botany, believed to have been the first attempted in the United States.

In 1818 appeared Eaton’s first noteworthy geological publication, the Index to the Geology of the Northern States, a text-book for the classes in geology at Williamstown. The controlling principle of this book was Wernerism, a false doctrine from which Eaton was never able to free himself. This book was “written over anew” and published in 1820.

While at Albany in 1818, Governor De Witt Clinton asked Eaton to deliver a course of lectures on chemistry and geology before the members of the legislature of New York. It is believed that Eaton is the only American having this distinction, and because of it he became acquainted with many leading men of the state, interesting them in geology and its application to agriculture by means of surveys. In this way was sown the idea which eventually was to fructify in that great official work: The Natural History of New York. (See =43=, 215, 1842; and Youmans’ sketch of Eaton’s life, Pop. Sci. Monthly, Nov. 1890.)

Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864), reverend, state geologist, college president, and another of the founders of American geology, was largely self-taught. Previous to 1825, when he entered the theological department of Yale College, he had met Amos Eaton, who interested him in botany and mineralogy, and between 1815 and 1819 he had made lists of the plants and minerals found about his native town, Deerfield, Massachusetts. Therefore, while studying theology at Yale it was natural for him also to take up mineralogy and geology with Silliman, whose acquaintance he had made at least as early as 1818.

Hitchcock, who was destined to be one of the most prominent figures of his time, was appointed in 1825 to the chair of chemistry and natural history at Amherst College. His first geologic paper, one of five pages, appeared in 1815. Three years later appeared his more important paper on the Geology and Mineralogy of a Section of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont (=1=, 105, 436, 1818). This is also noteworthy for its geological map, the next one to be published after those of Maclure of 1809 and 1817. In 1823 came a still greater work, A Sketch of the Geology, Mineralogy, and Scenery of the Regions contiguous to the River Connecticut (=6=, 1, 200, 1823; =7=, 1, 1824). Here the map above referred to was greatly improved, and the survey was one of the most important of the older publications.

Youmans in his account of Hitchcock (Pop. Sci. Monthly, Sept. 1895) says:

“The State of Massachusetts commissioned him to make a geological
survey of her territory in 1830. Three years were spent in the
explorations, and the work was of such a high character that other
States were induced to follow the example of Massachusetts.... The
State of New York sought his advice in the organization of a survey,
and followed his suggestions, particularly in the division of the
territory into four parts, and appointed him as the geologist of the
first district. He entered upon the work, but after a few days of
labor he found that he must necessarily be separated from his family,
much to his disinclination. He also conceived the idea of urging a
more thorough survey of his own State; hence he resigned his
commission and returned home. The effort for a resurvey of
Massachusetts was successful, and he was recommissioned to do the
work. The results appeared in 1841 and 1844.”

Oliver P. Hubbard was assistant to Silliman in 1831–1836, and then up to 1866 taught chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at Dartmouth College. James G. Percival was graduated at Yale in 1815, and in 1835 he and C. U. Shepard of Amherst College were appointed state geologists of Connecticut. Their report was issued in 1842.

James Dwight Dana (1813–1895) was undoubtedly the ablest of all of Silliman’s students. Graduated at Yale in 1833, he spent fifteen months in the United States Navy as instructor in mathematics, cruising off France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. In 1836 he was assistant to Silliman, and in 1837, at the age of twenty-four years, he published his widely used System of Mineralogy. Two years later Dana joined the Wilkes Exploring Expedition as mineralogist, returning to America in 1842; his geological results of this expedition were published in 1849. In 1863, during the Rebellion, he published his Manual of Geology, and through four editions it remained for forty years the standard text-book for American geologists.

_First American Geological Society._—The founding in 1807 of the Geological Society of London, the parent of geological societies, undoubtedly had its stimulating effect on Silliman, and with his marked organizing ability he began to think of forming an American society of the same kind. This he brought about the year following the appearance of the Journal, that is, in 1819. The American Geological Society, begun in 1819 (=1=, 442, 1819), was terminated in 1830 (=17=, 202, 1830). The first meeting (September 6, 1819) and all the subsequent ones were held in the cabinet of Yale College. The brief records of the doings of this society are printed in volumes =1=, =10=, =15=, and =18= of the Journal. Silliman was the attraction at the meetings, surrounded by his mineral cabinet, and he gave “the true scientific dress to all the naked mineralogical subjects” discussed.

_Wernerian Geology in North America._

_The Father of American Geology._—Historical Geology begins in America with William Maclure’s Observations on the Geology of the United States, issued in 1809. This was the first important original work on North American geology, and its colored geological map was the first one of the area east of the Mississippi River. The classification was essentially the Wernerian system. All of the strata of the Coastal Plain, now known to range from the Lower Cretaceous to Recent, were referred to the Alluvial. To the west, over the area of the Piedmont, were his Primitive rocks, while the older Paleozoic formations of the Appalachian ranges were referred to the Transition. West of the folded area, all was Floetz or Secondary, or what we now know as Paleozoic sedimentaries. The Triassic of the Piedmont area and that of Connecticut he called the Old Red Sandstone, and the coal formations of the interior region he said rested upon the Secondary. The second edition of the work in 1817 was much improved, along with the map, which was also printed on a more correct geographic base. (For greater detail, see Merrill, Contributions to the History of American Geology, 1906.)

Even though Maclure’s geologic maps are much generalized, and the scheme of classification adopted a very broad one, they are in the main correct, even if they do emphasize unduly the rather simple geologic structure of North America. This fact is patent all through Maclure’s description. Cleaveland also refers to it in his treatise of 1816, and Silliman in the opening volume of the Journal (=1=, 7, 1818) says: “The outlines of American geology appear to be particularly grand, simple, and instructive.” Then, all the kinds of rocks were comprehended under four classes, Primitive, Transition, Alluvial, and Volcanic. It is also interesting to note here that in 1822 Maclure had lost faith in the aqueous origin of the igneous rocks and writes of the Wernerian system as “fast going out of fashion” (=5=, 197, 1822), while Hitchcock said about the same thing in 1825 (=9=, 146).

_The Work of Eaton._—Amos Eaton, after traveling 10,000 miles and completing his Erie Canal Report in 1824, “reviewed the whole line several times,” and published in 1828 in the Journal (=14=, 145) a paper on Geological Nomenclature, Classes of Rocks, etc. The broader classification is the Wernerian one of Primitive, Transition, and Secondary classes. Under the first two he has fossiliferous early Paleozoic formations, but does not know it, because he pays no attention anywhere to the detail of the entombed fossils, and all of his Secondary is what we now call Paleozoic. The correlations of the latter are faulty throughout.

Then came his paper of 1830, Geological Prodromus (=17=, 63), in which he says: “I intend to demonstrate ... that all geological strata are arranged in five analogous series; and that each series consists of three formations; viz., the Carboniferous [meaning mud-stones], Quartzose, and Calcareous.” We seem to see here expressed for the first time the idea of “cycles of sedimentation,” but Eaton does not emphasize this idea, and the localities given for each “formation” of “analogous series” demonstrate beyond a doubt that he did not have a sedimentary sequence. The whole is simply a jumble of unrelated formations that happen to agree more or less in their physical characters.

“I intend to demonstrate,” he says further, “that the detritus of New Jersey, embracing the marle, which contains those remarkable fossil relics, is antediluvial, or the genuine Tertiary formation.” This correlation had been clearly shown by Finch in 1824 (=7=, 31) and yet both are in error in that they do not distinguish the included Cretaceous marls and greensands as something apart from the Tertiary.

One gets impatient with the later writings of Eaton, because he does not become liberalized with the progressive ideas in stratigraphic geology developing first in Europe and then in America, especially among the geologists of Philadelphia. Therefore it is not profitable to follow his work further.

_Early American Text-books of Geology._—The first American text-book of geology bears the date of Boston 1816 and is entitled An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology, its author being Parker Cleaveland of Bowdoin College. The second edition appeared in 1822. It also had a geologic map of the United States, practically a copy of Maclure’s. To mineralogy were devoted 585 pages, and to geology 55, of which 37 describe rocks and 5 the geology of the United States. The chronology is Wernerian. Of “geological systems” there are two, “primitive and secondary rocks.”

In 1818 appeared Amos Eaton’s Index to the Geology of the Northern States, having 54 pages, and in 1820 came the second edition, “wholly written over anew,” with 286 pages. The theory of the later edition is still that of Werner, with “improvements of Cuvier and Bakewell,” and yet one sees now-a-days but little in it of the far better English text-book. Eaton did very little to advance philosophic geology in America. What is of most value here are his personal observations in regard to the local geology of western Massachusetts, Connecticut, southwestern Vermont, and eastern New York (=1=, 69, 1819; also Merrill, p. 234).

We come now to the most comprehensive and advanced of the early text-books used in America. This is the third English edition of Robert Bakewell’s Introduction to Geology (400 pages, 1829), and the first American edition “with an Appendix Containing an Outline of his Course of Lectures on Geology at Yale College, by Benjamin Silliman” (128 pages). Bakewell’s good book is in keeping with the time, and while not so advanced as Conybeare and Phillips’s Outlines of 1822, yet is far more so than Silliman’s appendix. The latter is general and not specific as to details; it is still decidedly Wernerian, though in a modified form. Silliman says he is “neither Wernerian nor Huttonian,” and yet his summary on pages 120 to 126 shows clearly that he was not only a Wernerian but a pietist as well.

_Unearthing of the Cenozoic and Mesozoic in North America._

_The Discerning of the Tertiary._—The New England States, with their essentially igneous and metamorphic formations, could not furnish the proper geologic environment for the development of stratigraphers and paleontologists. So in America we see the rise of such geologists first in Philadelphia, where they had easy access to the horizontal and highly fossiliferous strata of the coastal plain. The first one to attract attention was Thomas Say, after him came John Finch, followed by Lardner Vanuxem, Isaac Lea, Samuel G. Morton, and T. A. Conrad. These men not only worked out the succession of the Cenozoic and the upper part of the Mesozoic, but blazed the way among the Paleozoic strata as well.

Thomas Say (1787–1834), in 1819, was the first American to point out the chronogenetic value of fossils in his article, Observations on some Species of Zoophytes, Shells, etc., principally Fossil (=1=, 381). He correctly states that the progress of geology “must be in part founded on a knowledge of the different genera and species of reliquiæ, which the various accessible strata of the earth present.” Say fully realizes the difficulties in the study of fossils, because of their fragmental character and changed nature, and that their correct interpretation requires a knowledge of similar living organisms.

The application of what Say pointed out came first in John Finch’s Geological Essay on the Tertiary Formations in America (=7=, 31, 1824). Even though the paper is still laboring under the mineral system and does not discern the presence of Cretaceous strata among his Tertiary formations, yet Finch also sees that “fossils constitute the medals of the ancient world, by which to ascertain the various periods.”

Finch now objects to the wide misuse in America of the term alluvial and holds that it is applied to what is elsewhere known as Tertiary. He says:

“Geology will achieve a triumph in America, when the term alluvial
shall be banished from her Geological Essays, or confined to its
legitimate domain, and then her tertiary formations will be seen to
coincide with those of Europe, and the formations of London, Paris,
and the Isle of Wight, will find kindred associations in Virginia, the
Carolinas, Georgias, the Floridas, and Louisiana.”

The formations as he has them from the bottom upwards are: (1) Ferruginous sand, (2) Plastic clay, (3) Calcaire Silicieuse of the Paris Basin, (4) London Clay, (5) Calcaire Ostrée, (6) Upper marine formation, (7) Diluvial.

The grandest of these early stratigraphic papers, however, is that by Lardner Vanuxem (1792–1848), of only three pages, entitled “Remarks on the Characters and Classification of Certain American Rock Formations” (=16=, 254, 1829). Vanuxem, a cautious man and a profound thinker, had been educated at the Paris School of Mines. James Hall told the writer in a conversation that while the first New York State Survey was in operation, all of its members looked to Vanuxem for advice.

In the paper above referred to, Vanuxem points out in a very concise manner that:

“The alluvial of Mr. Maclure ... contains not only well characterized
alluvion, but products of the tertiary and secondary classes. Littoral
shells, similar to those of the English and Paris basins, and pelagic
shells, similar to those of the chalk deposition or latest secondary,
abound in it. These two kinds of shells are not mixed with each other;
they occur in different earthy matter, and, in the southern states
particularly, are at different levels. The incoherency or earthiness
of the mass, and our former ignorance of the true position of the
shells, have been the sources of our erroneous views.”

The second error of the older geologists, according to Vanuxem, was the extension of the secondary rocks over “the western country, and the back and upper parts of New York.” They are now called Paleozoic. Some had even tried to show the presence of Jurassic here because of the existence of oölite strata. “It was taken for granted, that all horizontal rocks are secondary, and as the rocks of these parts of the United States are horizontal in their position, so they were supposed to be secondary.” He then shows on the basis of similar Ordovician fossils that the rocks of Trenton Falls, New York, recur at Frankfort in Kentucky, and at Nashville in Tennessee.

“It is also certain that an uplifting or downfalling force, or both, have existed, but it is not certain that either or both these forces have acted in a uniform manner.... Innumerable are the facts, which have fallen under my observation, which show the fallacy of adopting inclination for the character of a class,” such as the Transition class of strata. He then goes on to say that in the interior of our country the so-called secondary rocks are horizontal and in the mountains to the east the same strata are highly inclined. “The analogy, or identity of rocks, I determine by their fossils in the first instance, and their position and mineralogical characters in the second or last instance.”

It appears that Isaac Lea (1792–1886) in his Contributions to Geology, 1833, was the first to transplant to America Lyell’s terms, Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene, proposed the previous year. The celebrated Claiborne locality was made known to Lea in 1829, and in the work here cited he describes from it 250 species, of which 200 are new. The horizon is correlated with the London Clay and with the Calcaire Grossier of France, both of Eocene time (=25=, 413, 1834).

Timothy A. Conrad began to write about the American Tertiary in 1830, and his more important publications were issued at Philadelphia. His papers in the Journal begin with 1833 and the last one on the Tertiary is in 1846.

The Tertiary faunas and stratigraphy have been modernized by William H. Dall in his monumental work of 1650 pages and 60 plates entitled “Contributions to the Tertiary Fauna of Florida” (1885–1903). Here more than 3160 forms of the Atlantic and Gulf deposits are described, but in order to understand their relations to the fossil faunas elsewhere and to the living world, the author studied over 10,000 species. Since then, many other workers have interested themselves in the Tertiary problems. Much good work is also being done in the Pacific States where the sequence is being rapidly developed.

_The Discerning of the Eastern Cretaceous._—The Cretaceous sequence was first determined by that “active and acute geologist,” Samuel G. Morton (1799–1851), but that these rocks might be present along the Atlantic border had been surmised as early as 1824 by Edward Hitchcock (=7=, 216). Vanuxem, as above pointed out, indicated the presence of the Cretaceous in 1829. In this same year Morton proved its presence before the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

Between 1830 and 1835 Morton published a series of papers in the Journal under the title “Synopsis of the Organic Remains of the Ferruginous Sand Formation of the United States, with Geological Remarks” (=17=, 274, _et seq._). In these he describes the Cretaceous fossils and demonstrates that the “Diluvial” and Tertiary strata of the Atlantic border also have a long sequence of Cretaceous formations. In the opening paper he writes: “I consider the marl of New Jersey as referable to the great ferruginous sand series, which in Prof. Buckland’s arrangement is designated by the name of green sand.... On the continent this series is called the ancient chalk ... lower chalk,” etc. Again, the marls of New Jersey are “geologically equivalent to those beds which in Europe are interposed between the white chalk and the Oölites.” This correlation is with the European Lower Cretaceous, but we now know the marls to be of Upper Cretaceous age. Although Eaton objected strenuously to Morton’s correlation, we find M. Dufresnoy of France saying, “Your limestone above green sand reminds me very much of the Mæstricht beds,” a correlation which stands to this day (=22=, 94, 1832). In 1833 Morton announces that the Cretaceous is known all along the Atlantic and Gulf border, and in the Mississippi valley. “The same species of fossils are found throughout,” and none of them are known in the Tertiary. He now arranges the strata of the former “Alluvial” as follows:

Modern │Alluvial.
„ │Diluvial.
─────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Tertiary │Upper Tertiary (Upper Marine).
„ │Middle Tertiary (London Clay).
„ │Lower Tertiary (Plastic Clay).
─────────┼─────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────
Secondary│Calcareous Strata│Cretaceous group, or Ferruginous Sand
│ │ series (=24=, 128).
„ │Ferruginous Sand │ „

_Western Cretaceous._—In 1841 and 1843 J. N. Nicollet announced the discovery of Cretaceous in the Rocky Mountain area. Of 20 species of fossils collected by him, 4 were said to occur on the Atlantic border, and of the 200 forms of the Atlantic slope only 1 was found in Europe. Here we see pointed out a specific dissimilarity between the continents, and a similarity between the American areas of Cretaceous deposits (=41=, 181; =45=, 153).

The Cretaceous of the Rocky Mountains was clearly developed by F. V. Hayden in 1855–1888 and by F. B. Meek (1857–1876). Other workers in this field were Charles A. White (1869–1891), and R. P. Whitfield (1877–1889). Since 1891 T. W. Stanton has been actively interpreting its stratigraphy and faunas.

_Cretaceous and Comanche of Texas._—The broader outlines of the Cretaceous of Texas had been described by Ferdinand Roemer in 1852 in his good work, Kreidebildungen von Texas, but it was not until 1887 that Robert T. Hill showed in the Journal (=33=, 291) that it included two great series, the Gulf series, or what we now call Upper Cretaceous, and a new one, the Comanche series. This was a very important step in the right direction. Since then the Comanche series has been regarded by some stratigraphers as of period value, while others call it Lower Cretaceous; the rest of the Texas Cretaceous is divided by Hill into Middle and Upper Cretaceous. On the other hand, Lower Cretaceous strata had been proved even earlier in the state of California, for here in 1869 W. M. Gabb (1839–1878) and J. D. Whitney (1819–1896) had defined their Shasta group, which was wholly distinct faunally from the Comanche of Texas and the southern part of the Great Plains country.

_Jurassic and Triassic of the West._—In 1864, the Geological Survey of California proved the presence of marine Upper Triassic in that State, and since then it has been shown that not only is all of the Triassic present in Idaho (where it has been known since 1877), Oregon, Nevada, and California, but that the Upper Triassic is of very wide distribution throughout western North America. Jurassic strata, on the other hand, were not shown to be present in California until 1885, while in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States there was long known an unresolved series of “Red Beds” situated between the Carboniferous and Cretaceous. This gave rise to the “Red Bed problem,” the history of which is given by C. A. White in the Journal (=17=, 214, 1879). In 1869, F. V. Hayden announced the discovery of marine Jurassic fossils in this series, and since then they have come to be known as the Sundance fauna, extending from southern Utah and Colorado into Alaska. Above lie the dinosaur-bearing fresh-water deposits, since 1894 known as the Morrison beds. In 1896, O. C. Marsh (1831–1899) announced the presence of Jurassic fresh-water strata along the Atlantic coast (=2=, 433), but to-day only a small part of them are regarded as of the age of the Morrison, while the far greater part are referred to the Comanche or Lower Cretaceous. The red beds below the Jurassic of the Rocky Mountain area have during the past twenty years been shown to be in part of Upper Triassic age and of fresh-water origin, while the greater lower part is connected with the Carboniferous series and is made up of brackish— and fresh-water deposits of probable Permian time.

_Triassic of Atlantic States._—The fresh-water Triassic of the Atlantic border states was first mentioned by Maclure (1817), who regarded it as the equivalent of the Old Red Sandstone of Europe. In this he was followed by Hitchcock in 1823 (=6=, 39), the latter saying that above it lies “the coal formation,” which is true for Europe, but in America the coal strata are older than these red beds, now known to be of Triassic age.

The first one to question this correlation was Alexandre Brongniart, who had received from Hitchcock rock specimens and a fossil fish which he erroneously identified with a Permian species, and accordingly referred the strata to the Permian (=3=, 220, 1821; =6=, 76, pl. 9, figs. 1, 2, 1823). The discerning Professor Finch in 1826 remarked that the red beds of Connecticut appear to belong “to the new or variegated sandstone,” because of eight different criteria that he mentions. Of these, but two are of value in correlation, their “geological position” and the presence of bones other than fishes. In the Connecticut area, however, the geological position cannot be determined even to-day, and in Finch’s time the bones of dinosaurs were unknown. Finch then goes on to point out the occurrences of Old Red Sandstone in Pennsylvania, but all of the places he refers to are either younger or older in time. Here we again see the fatality of trying to make positive correlations on the basis of lithology and color (=10=, 209, 1826). In 1835, however, Hitchcock showed that the bones that had been found in 1820 were those of a saurian, and accordingly referred the strata of the Connecticut valley to the New Red Sandstone, a term that then covered both the Permian and the Triassic. In 1842, W. B. Rogers referred the beds to the Jurassic, on the basis of plants from Virginia. In 1856, W. C. Redfield (1789–1857), because of the fishes, advocated a Lias, or Jurassic age, and proposed the name Newark group for all the Triassic deposits of the Atlantic border. More recently, on the basis of the plants studied by Newberry, Fontaine, Sturr, and Ward, and the vertebrates described by Marsh and Lull, the age has been definitely fixed as Upper Triassic (see Dana’s Manual of Geology, 740, 1895).

_Unearthing of the Paleozoic in North America._

_Permian of the United States._—In Europe, previous to 1841, the formations now classed as Permian were included in the New Red Sandstone, and with the Carboniferous were referred to the Secondary. In that year Murchison proposed the period term Permian. In 1845 came the classic Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, by Murchison, Keyserling, and De Verneuil. In this great work the authors separated out of the New Red the Magnesian Limestone of Great Britain and the Rothliegende marls, Kupferschiefer, and Zechstein of Germany, and with other formations of the Urals in Russia, referred them to the Permian system. This step, one of the most discerning in historical geology, was all the more important because they closed the Paleozoic era with the Permian, beginning the Secondary, or Mesozoic, with the New Red Sandstone or the Triassic period. There is a good review of this work by D. D. Owen (1807–1860) in the Journal for 1847 (=3=, 153).

Owen, though accepting the Permian system, is not satisfied with its reference to the Paleozoic, and he sets the matter forth in the Journal (=3=, 365, 1847). He doubts “the propriety of a classification which throws the Permian and Carboniferous systems into the Paleozoic period.” This is mainly because there is no “evidence of disturbance or unconformability” between the Permian and Triassic systems. Rather “there is so complete a blending of adjacent strata” that it is only in Russia that the Permian has been distinguished from the Triassic. This view of Owen’s was not only correct for Russia but even more so for the Alps and for India, and it has taken a great deal of work and discussion to fix upon the disconformable contact that distinguishes the Paleozoic from the Mesozoic in these areas. In other words, there was here at this time no mountain making. Then Owen goes on to state that because the Permian of Europe has reptiles, he sees in them decisive Mesozoic evidence. “These are certainly strong arguments in favor of placing, not only the Permian, but also the Carboniferous group in the Mesozoic period, and terminating the Paleozoic division with the commencement of the coal measures.” To this harking backward the geologists of the world have not agreed, but have followed the better views of Murchison and his associates.

In 1855 G. G. Shumard discovered, and in 1860 his brother B. F. Shumard (1820–1869) announced, the presence of Permian strata in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas, and in 1902 George H. Girty (=14=, 363) confirmed this. Girty regards the faunas as younger than any other late Paleozoic ones of America, and says: “For this reason I propose to give them a regional name, which shall be employed in a force similar to Mississippian and Pennsylvanian.... The term Guadalupian is suggested.”

G. C. Swallow (1817–1899) in 1858 was the first to announce the presence of Permian fossils in Kansas, and this led to a controversy between himself and F. B. Meek, both claiming the discovery. It is only in more recent years that it has been generally admitted that there is Permian in that state, in Oklahoma, and in Texas. This admission came the more readily through the discovery of many reptiles in the red beds of Texas, and through the work of C. A. White, published in 1891, The Texan Permian and its Mesozoic Types of Fossils (Bull. U. S. Geological Survey, No. =77=).

_Carboniferous Formations._—The coal formations are noted in a general way throughout the earliest volumes of the Journal. The first accounts of the presence of coal, in Ohio, are by Caleb Atwater (=1=, 227, 239, 1819), and S. P. Hildreth (=13=, 38, 40, 1828). The first coal plants to be described and illustrated were also from Ohio, in an article by Ebenezer Granger in 1821 (=3=, 5–7). The anthracite field was first described in 1822 by Zachariah Cist (=4=, 1) and then by Benjamin Silliman (=10=, 331–351, 1826); that of western Pennsylvania was described by William Meade in 1828 (=13=, 32).