PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. VII, pp. 1-25. June 20, 1905. 



THE RELATIONS OF SOME CARBONIFEROUS 



FAUNAS.^ 



By George H. Girty. 



However wide the deviation in practice, a description of the 

 admirable scientific method as being that in which evidence or 

 authority is adduced for each new or undemonstrated statement, 

 would probably meet with general acceptance ; yet departure 

 from this method is regarded as permissible in certain cases, and 

 scientific discussion does find a legitimate field in which the 

 presentation of evidence plays a subordinate part. It is believed 

 that the subject of the present paper presents such a field, yet my 

 own indisposition toward publications of this sort is such that 

 the manuscript has been withheld for many months, largely 

 through unwillingness to enter it. The fact that the following 

 pages are a presentation of problems for solution rather than a 

 statement of results, with its implicated claim to priority, will, 

 it is hoped, serve my excuse. A man with an arrow may hit a 

 mark which another laboriously has his hand upon, and it seems 

 as if far too much of that prized commodity, credit, were com- 

 monly awarded to priority of statement as against priority of 

 demonstration. 



During the past 9 or 10 years collections of Carboniferous 

 invertebrate fossils have come under my observation in great 

 numbers, and from a very extensive area. Many facts relating 

 to the dispersion and relation of faunas have thus been ascer- 

 tained, or divined with greater or less certainty ; but the very 

 1 Published by permission of the Directors of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



I 

 Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., June, 1905. 



