F. GEOGRAPHY. 271 



The area assigned to Lieutenant Birnie, who was assisted 

 by two topographers, one odometer recorder and meteorol- 

 ogist, was from a point on the summit of the range leading 

 south from Trenchera Peak, immediately west of the Span- 

 ish Peaks, to the head of the Taos Creek basin ; thence west- 

 erly to longitude 108 15', and northerly along this to the 

 latitudinal line passing through Tierra Amarilla; and thence 

 by a line reaching from Tierra Amarilla to Trenchera Peak. 

 The party was successful in accomplishing their work over 

 this area, and, crossing the range late in the season, measured 

 a base at the astronomical station at Cimarron. 



A special party for natural-history researches and paleon- 

 tological collections, under Dr. Yarrow for a part of the sea- 

 son, and Professor Cope from the 15th of September up to 

 the close of the season, operated on a line from Pueblo to Fort 

 Garland, through the Sangre de Christo Pass, and down the 

 valley of the Rio Grande, striking at Taos and San Ilde- 

 fonso upon beds of vertebrate and invertebrate fossils found 

 there ; thence to Santa Fe, and south to Algedones ; thence 

 north and westward to Tierra Amarilla, and thence south 

 and west to Gallinas Creek, Caiion Largo, and Nacimiento, 

 returning via Cornejos, Fort Garland, etc., to Pueblo. This 

 party was also accompanied by a topographer, whose death 

 by an accidental shot from a pistol is the only casualty thus 

 far to be noted through the season. The results have been 

 extremely rich in many ways, adding largely to the present 

 stock of new and rare forms, especially of vertebrates in the 

 eocene formation, and progress reports are already in press 

 from Professor Cope on this latter subject. 



The more important results in the several branches of the 

 survey may be succinctly set forth as follows. Here we 

 note 



Astronomy, the occupation by the main parties of stations 

 at Las Vegas and Cimarron, New Mexico; Sidney Barracks, 

 Julesburg, and North Platte, Nebraska; the determination of 

 the latitude of Pueblo ; the connection of the observatory at 

 Ogden with the Naval Observatory at Washington. It may 

 here be stated that the observatory at Ogden had been before 

 connected with that established in Temple Square, Salt Lake 

 City, where astronomical co-ordinates were determined when 

 the United States Coast Survey were connecting longitudi- 



