342 OHTO STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
“strata in that remarkable section, collected their fossils and pro- 
posed their own stratigraphic terms,” some of which as for 
example, Pentamerus limestone and Tentaculite limestone are still 
familiar names to geologists. 
This work of Eaton and the Gebhards marked the beginning of 
stratigraphic geology in America which in eighty-five years has 
extended to every state and territory of this country and to every 
province of Canada. 
It is claimed that North Carolina was the first state to order 
a geological survey. In 1824 Professor Olmstead was appointed 
State Geologist and in that year and the following one he published 
a report of one hundred odd pages. Her sister state of South 
Carolina followed in 1825 with the appointment of Professor 
Vanuxem ; but as his results were not published by the state they 
were consequently lost, except what appeared in the periodicals. 
In 1830 Massachusetts ordered a trigonometrical and geological 
survey of the state with Professor Edward Hitchcock of Amherst 
College as State Geologist. The thirties were prolific years in the 
organization of state surveys and during this period such surveys 
were established by Maryland, Tennessee, Arkansas, New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, Maine, Connecticut, 
Ohio, Michigan, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, the David 
Dale Owen Survey of Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, and in Canada 
by New Brunswick and Newfoundland. 
The Geological and Natural History Survey of New York 
was not authorized until twelve years later than the first one of 
North Carolina. Still it must be conceded by any one conversant 
with the history of geology that none of the other surveys exerted 
so great an influence in the dev elopment of American geology ; nay, 
I will go further and state that the combined influence of all the 
other states was not equal to that of New York. This may seem 
like a strong statement but permit me to read from an address by 
McGee delivered at the celebration in honor of the sixtieth anni- 
versary of Professor James Hall’s public service as a geologist of 
New York. Let us remember in passing that McGee is a native 
of Iowa, was never a resident of New York nor a member of its 
survey and was not a paleontologist. | Among other things he 
said: “Other systems of nomenclature have come and gone; the 
brilliant and attractive * * * system proposed by the Rogers 
brothers for a time competed with the system devised in New 
York: but no other system has endured the test of time * * #* 
The New York formations were defined by fossil contents, as were 
those of England and the Continent, while the nature and genesis 
of deposits were given greater weight than before; and this method 
has been followed more or less closely by the geologists of the world 
1 Dr, John M. Clarke in High School Bul. 25, 1905, p, 497, 
