118 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



SOME NOTES ON KANSAS GEOLOGY. 



By L. C. WoosTEE, State Normal School, Emporia. 

 Read before tha Academy, at Manhattan, November 27, 1903. 



IN the beginnings of every science, the chief work done by the work- 

 ers in the several departments consists in collecting and accumu- 

 lating facts of observation and representative forms of the minerals, 

 plants or animals in which the collector has become interested. The 

 embryo scientist, or, more properly, naturalist, soon becomes pos- 

 sessed with a fever or craze for collecting. As his collection grows, 

 his fever or craze increases in intensity or virulence till it possesses 

 the whole man or woman. The several members of this Academy il- 

 lustrate to a greater or less degree the truthfulness of this generaliza- 

 tion. 



As the collection grows, as the number of objects and observations 

 become so great as to be burdensome, the collector is forced to ar- 

 range his collection after some plan, original or borrowed. The 

 classification, at first rude, soon becomes more systematic, and a new 

 craze possesses him. He loves to classify every thing within his reach> 

 and exhausts bis Greek vocabulary in securing a supply of names 

 for his species, genera, orders, and classes. The naturalist next adds 

 method to his madness and collects more systematically, hunting most 

 zealously for missing links in his collection. He readily pays twenty- 

 five or tifty dollars, as did Doctor Horn, of Berlin, for a single beetle, 

 or he travels a thousand miles to identify a single bird. 



The scientist, as he should next be called, becomes increasingly 

 mathematical as he becomes more methodical, and time and form or 

 space values receive his earnest attention. In geology he constructs 

 beautiful chronologies, and tries to make his time and rock groupings 

 conform to the mathematical terms in use in common speech. The 

 scientist-geologist talks very confidently of the millions of years cov- 

 ered by his eons and eras, and, as his vision becomes more microscopic 

 and less telescopic, with more exact data at hand, he speaks with 

 equal assurance of the years covered by his periods, epochs, and 

 hemeras. Unfortunately, as one scientist becomes more exact in his 

 estimates and names his subdivisions of geological time to suit his 

 individual plan, other scientists insist on being exact in their way, and 

 use those names for the subdivisions of time which suit their own 

 convenience, and a variety of chronologies results. Here, as in other 

 fields, the fittest should survive, regardless of priority. The priority 

 fad is certainly being overworked at the present time. 



