REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 89 



Tbe necessity for increasing the topographic force in Kew England 

 delayed the construction of the map of this area; but arrangements 

 have been made for its completion, and Mr. MeGee will thus be enabled 

 to present in comprehensive form the complicated phenoma of the region 

 which he has under study. 



PALEONTOLOGY. 



A few changes were made in the distribution of the work of the pale- 

 ontologic corps, looking to its greater systematization and effective- 

 ness. Certain independent parties which had previously been under 

 the immediate instruction of the director were assigned to duty under 

 the chiefs of division, and the paleontologic corps was increased by the 

 acquisition of Dr.W. H.Dall, formerly of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 



Vertebrates. — Prof. O. C. Marsh's personal work was confined to the 

 prepariition of the manuscript and illustrations of his volumes on the 

 Dinocerata and the Sauropoda, and to the administrative duties of his 

 division. The former monograph was about ready for publication at 

 the end of the year. Early in the spring four field parties were sent 

 out, two to the Jurassic beds of Wyoming, one to the same horizon in 

 Colorado, and one to Northern Kausas. There was received from these 

 parties during the year an unusually large amount of material. Their 

 success in collecting Pliocene mammals in Kansas, and the remains of 

 Dinosaurs in Colorado and Wyoming was marked — 119 boxes having 

 been taken from one locality in Kansas alone. Upon the approach of 

 the winter season the collecting parties were transferred to Texas where 

 the weather is such as to permit exploration throughout the entire year. 



Paleozoic hivertehrates. — During the winter mouths Mr. C. D. Wal- 

 cott, the chief of this division, was engaged in the preparation of a re- 

 port on the Paleontology of the Eureka District, to accompany the 

 monograph of Mr. J. S. Curtis on the Silver-Lead Deposits of this 

 same region. 



The plan of field work for the summer embraced the study by Mr. 

 Walcott in person of the Cambrian system in Eastern New York and 

 Western Vermont, including the preparation of numerous geologic sec- 

 tions and the collection of a large series of fossils ; the continuance by 

 Assistant Geologist Williams of his investigations in the Devonian and 

 Lower Carboniferous in Western New York and Northern Pennsylvania 

 on about the same plan as that pursued in 1883, and the sending out of 

 collectors to obtain fossils from the Potsdam and Lower Maguesian form- 

 ations of Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota, and from the Cambrian of 

 Northern Alabama. The latter part of this plan was satisfactorily carried 

 out, but in the midst of his investigations in Vermont and New York Mr. 

 Walcott was recalled, in conformity with the wish of the Honorable the 

 Secretary of the Interior, who desired that a compt^tent geologist of the 

 Survey be designated to act as a member of a commission to examine 

 supposed coal-bearing areas on the White Mountain Indian Eeservation, 



