HISTORICAJv SKETCH. 



II. HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



The Raritan and allied formations have been the subject of 

 numerous contributions to science during" the past fifty years, 

 while scattered references to these deposits, which extend back 

 over a century and a half, may be found in the older works. 



The Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden sent the distin- 

 guished naturalist, Peter Kalm, who is commemorated in the 

 generic name of our beautiful laurels (Kaliuia) to America, in 

 1749, and the results of his travels and investigations were 

 subsequently published in three volumes at Stockholm, and after- 

 ward translated into English and French. His was, perhaps, 

 the first contribution to Coastal Plain geology which is worthy 

 of mention. Twenty-eight years later a German naturalist, 

 Johann David Schoepf, visited this area, and in a book published 

 at Erlangen, ten years later, he records many observations of 

 interest. The first geologist to attempt any correlation with 

 Europe was William Maclure, who in various publications cov- 

 ering the period from 1809 to 181 7, referred the Coastal Plain 

 deposits collectively to the ''Alluvial formation," the fourth of 

 the main divisions of Werner's classification. 



Samuel Akerly, in 1820, and James Pierce, in 1823, discussed 

 the "alluvial deposits" in the vicinity of Raritan Bay without, 

 however, having added much that was new. 



The first author to recognize even in slight measure the com- 

 plexity of the Coastal Plain formations was John Finch, an Eng- 

 lishman, and an ardent collector of fossils. He read a paper 

 before the Philadelphia Academy in 1824, at the close of his 

 travels, and on the eve of his departure for England, which was 

 subsequently published.^ Some years later he published a book 

 on the same subject. He condemns the term "alluvial" and 

 points out that the Coastal Plain deposits of Maclure and others 

 are identical with the newer Secondary and Tertiary formations 

 of Europe. The non-marine Cretaceous he correlates on the 



^Amer. Jour. Sci. (I), VII: 31-43, 1824. 



