414 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE Vol. XXVI, 1919 



attention at this time, since they are exposed mainly outside of the 

 field in which he then worked. 



At a somewhat later date^^ Owen further elaborated upon his 

 classificatory scheme and instituted a parallelism between the Iowa 

 and the New York sections. 



INTRODUCTION OP THE ENGLISH ROCK-SCHEME INTO AMERICA 



Although the English classification of geological terranes was not 

 yet a decade old Owen already incorporated it in his Iowa work. 

 Up to the time of the appearance of Owen's report (1844), Thomas 

 Conrad seems to have been the only American geologist who was 

 at all inclined to recognize the new English classification. His appli- 

 cation of it to the New York rocks was surprisingly unfortunate. 

 During the time that he was superintendent of the New York 

 Geological Survey and the annual reports of the four districts were 

 being published, an attempt was made to harmonize the New York 

 section with that of England. The effort was far from proving 

 satisfactory. Partly for this reason and partly, perhaps, on account 

 of the fact that the New York geologists, after Conrad had left the 

 survey, were carried away with the idea of establishing instead of 

 a Paleozoic sequence, a "New York System," the final reports came 

 out, in 1843, with Conrad's plans entirely abandoned. 



When, then, the second and revised edition of the "Report of 

 the Geological Exploration of Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois" ap- 

 peared, in 1844, Owen was the only geologist in this country who 

 had with any degree of success adapted the novel English classi- 

 fication of rock formations, and who had accurately determined their j| 

 stratigraphic delimitations in a definite section. His earlier sub- 

 division of the Cliff limestone into three parts of Upper, Middle and 

 Lower, were here called Upper Shell Beds, or Devonian, the Middle J 

 Coralline Beds, or Upper Silurian, and the Lower Lead-bearing 

 Beds, or Lower Silurian. These several subdivisions were, he as- 

 tutely remarks, also distinguished by their contained fossils ; and 

 he enumerated and illustrated some of the most characteristic forms. 



As pioneer of pioneers Owen was a man of remarkably keen in- 

 sight into matters geological. The acumen which he, in a perfectly 

 virgin country, displayed in deciphering the problems which suc- 

 cessively presented themselves would have done credit to any one, 

 even the geologist of today. In our state, in Missouri, and in Min- 

 nesota, I have personally in the field gone over much of his work, 

 and I have had repeated occasion to verify his recorded results in 



"Rept. Geol. Surv. Wise, Iowa and Minn., 638 pp., 1852. 



