SKETCH OF DAVID DALE OWEN. 263 



The scope of his examination was then enlarged so as to em- 

 brace a fuller survey of portions of the Northwest Territory, 

 lying mainly within the present States of Wisconsin, Iowa, and 

 Minnesota. This task required five years of field work and a final 

 year of laboratory and office work, ending with the year 1852. A 

 large appropriation was made by Congress for illustrating and 

 printing Owen's report, all the details of publication being com- 

 mitted to him. The result was a finely illustrated quarto volume 

 of six hundred and thirty-eight pages, many of the illustrations 

 being from the original drawings of Dr. Owen, who had great 

 facility in sketching. In this volume he applied for the first time 

 the medal-ruling style of engraving to cuts of fossils. 



In an article on Geological Surveys in Missouri Mr. Arthur 

 Winslow says of Owen's reports up to this time: "These reports 

 supplied the guiding lines along which later stratigraphic work 

 in the Mississippi Valley was done. Without attempting here to 

 present the history of this work, its bearing upon the future work 

 in Missouri calls for brief mention. In the Indiana reports Owen 

 makes a separation of the rocks, in harmony with the English 

 classification, into 1. Bituminous coal formations. 2. Mountain 

 limestone. 3. Grauwacke. 4. Crystalline and inferior stratified 

 rocks. In the succeeding reports, as the results of wider observa- 

 tion and more thorough study, the classification was changed and 

 differentiated until, in the final report, we find a classification 

 which, not only in its general features, but in many of its details, 

 is still adhered to in Missouri." 



From 1854 to 1859 Dr. Owen was occupied with the geological 

 survey of Kentucky, having been appointed State Geologist by 

 Governor Powell. The results of his explorations were published 

 as the work progressed, and compose four large octavo volumes. 

 Dr. Robert Peter, of Lexington, Ky., performed the chemical 

 work of the survey and made a special report upon it. 



Toward the close of his labors in Kentucky, in October, 1857, 

 Dr. Owen was commissioned to conduct a geological survey of the 

 State of Arkansas. His principal assistant in the Kentucky sur- 

 vey, Mr. E. T. Cox, filled the same position in the new work. The 

 chemical assistant on the latter survey was Dr. Elderhorst, author 

 of a work on the blowpipe. Various incidents in his several sur- 

 veys prove Dr. Owen to have been a man of indomitable perse- 

 verance. Once, while on the Red River of the North with a 

 Canadian voyageur, the fowling-piece used by the latter for pro- 

 curing game was discharged in such a way as to lodge a number 

 of shot in Dr. Owen's shoulder. But he did not permit the acci- 

 dent to delay him an hour. Again, the summer occupied with the 

 field work of the Arkansas survey, a considerable part of which 

 was necessarily spent in the rich and malarious bottom lands. 



