28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



were practically imknown and there were few graded roads; aneroids 

 were mere toys and Locke had not invented his pocket level ; there were 

 no instruments except those of cumbrous size; boiling point thermom- 

 eters were tried but they proved worthless; there were few maps and 

 such as did exist were misleading. The young men, without previous 

 training, without instruments of any sort, except a compass, and with- 

 out maps, were thrown into the unexplored region. It has been my 

 privilege to reexamine much of the area in which they labored. How 

 they obtained their results passes comprehension; they carried the 

 Bituminous section in Pennsylvania and Virginia with wondrous 

 accuracy, though at times there were intervals of miles in which no 

 exposures existed except along streams flowing through the woodland. 

 It is easy now to discover inaccuracies in their work, for men can 

 examine it, so to speak, with a microscope. These early geologists, for 

 the most part, were men of gigantic intellect and noble integrity. 



With the close of these surveys in 1842 to 1845, extended work 

 came to an end. Some organizations were continued in a moderate way, 

 but all except those of Illinois and New York were broken up by the 

 Civil War, and there was no revival until the later sixties. Meanwhile 

 the condition existing in 1836 had returned. Not more than 30 men 

 survived who had been trained in field work; some of these had gone 

 into special work as mining engineers, others were in enfeebled health, 

 and others still were in positions less onerous and more remunerative 

 than survey work. Probably not more than ten men were available in 

 1869, and several of those were attached to surveys not interrupted by 

 the Civil War. 



The Ohio survey, reorganized in 1869, had as its director the 

 veteran Newberry, who, as a young physician, had entered the United 

 States service during the Pacific Eailroad explorations. As a lad he 

 had collected fossil plants from the roof of his father's coal mine in 

 Ohio, and in later years he had studied paleobotany under Brongniart 

 in Paris. His work as geologist, botanist and zoologist on the Pacific 

 Eailroad explorations was brilliant, but in importance was far excelled 

 by his later geological work on the Ives and Macomb expeditions. Of 

 his assistants on the Ohio survey, only one could be regarded as a pro- 

 fessional geologist; the others were amateurs. Of the aids and co- 

 workers, not more than three had done any field work and the most of 

 us were wholly inexperienced. "We were expected to succeed without 

 help, as our predecessors had done; an area was assigned to each man 

 and he was told to get at it. The state maps were good, but on a 

 small scale; the general structure had been worked out by the Mather 

 survey long before, and both Newberry and Whittlesey had published 

 small outline maps; but, as far as details were concerned, the region 

 was a t&rra incognita. 



