262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dred and thirty-nine subagents and assistants; instructed my 

 subagents in such elementary principles of geology as were neces- 

 sary to the performance of the duties required of them ; supplied 

 them with simple mineralogical tests, with the application of 

 which they were made acquainted ; organized twenty-four work- 

 ing corps, furnished each with skeleton maps of the townships 

 assigned to them for examination, and placed the whole at the 

 points where their labors commenced, all along the line of the 

 western half of the territory to be examined. Thence the expedi- 

 tion proceeded northward, each corps required, on the average, to 

 overrun and examine thirty quarter sections daily, and to report 

 to myself on fixed days at regularlj^ appointed stations : to receive 

 which reports and to examine the country in person, I crossed the 

 district under examination, in an oblique direction, eleven times 

 in the course of the survey." 



It was in the spring of 1840 that William Maclure died. As 

 administrator of his estate, his brother Alexander engaged Dr. 

 Owen to assort the very extensive collection of minerals and 

 fossils which Mr. Maclure had made in the course of his geological 

 exploration of the United States and his travels in this country, 

 Europe, and the West Indies. Specific suites were to be distrib- 

 uted to certain schools and colleges, and the remainder was to be 

 retained by Dr. Owen as the nucleus of a museum. These direc- 

 tions were duly carried out. With regard to the portion remain- 

 ing in Dr. Owen's hands The American Geologist* states: "To 

 this latter Dr. Owen subsequently added largely, by purchase 

 from Dr. Krantz, of Germany, illustrative fossils of every period ; 

 among others an ichthyosaurus, from the Lias of Wiirtemberg, 

 larger than the one in the British Museum. Another interesting 

 and valuable specimen was a nearly complete skeleton of a gigan- 

 tic megatheroid animal (the Megalonyx) which he exhumed near 

 Henderson, Ky. The entire collection some years after Dr. Owen's 

 death was purchased by the Indiana University, and unfortunately 

 nearly all consumed by fire, when the new university building, 

 including the museum, laboratory, and library, was destroyed." 



Dr. Owen was again called into the service of the Government 

 in 1847, being appointed United States Geologist and directed to 

 make a survey of the Chippewa land district. His Preliminary 

 Report, made in the following year to the Hon. R. M. Young, then 

 Commissioner of the Land Office, was a document of one hundred 

 and thirty- four octavo pages, and was accompanied by three hun- 

 dred and twenty-three lithographs from his own sketches, and 

 numerous maps, diagrams, etc. 



* Sketch of the Life of David Dale Owen, M. D., August, 1889, to wliich source acknowl- 

 edgmeut is due for the greater portion of the material entering into the present article. 



