A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY IN INDIANA. 143 



ments is given of a large meteorite which fell near Biiena Vista, Harrison 

 County, in 1859, the larger pieces of which, called the "Indiana Meteorite," 

 are now in the British Museum at London. 



The report on Crawford County is largely devoted to the numerous caves, 

 large and small, found in the limestone rocks. Cope's paper on the fauna 

 of Wyandotte being reprinted. Of Little Wyandotte, Collett gives the length 

 as "about 2,000 feet." Accurate measurements by the writer showed it to 

 be 415 feet. A new map of Wyandotte, prepared by Collett and illustrated 

 on the margin with seven lithographs of views within the cave, accompany 

 the report. "A table of distances measured and estimated by Washington 

 Rothrock, a guide of 28 years' experience" (Collett, in a footnote, says they 

 are "generally estimated") is printed on the map, and gives the total length 

 as 23.5 miles. In the description of the Pillared Palace is a sentence v/hich 

 the average scientist of today will accept "cum grano salis." "Ceiling, cornices 

 and shelves" Collett says, "are fringed with stalagmites and frosted with a 

 never ending medly of strange, crooked, writhing, twisting, unsymmetrical 

 sprigs of white limestone, pushed out of the solid rock and still groiving by 

 propulsion from the botto77i." 



All told, Prof. Cox issued, while serving as State Geologist, ten reports, 

 published in seven volumes, comprising 2,954 printed pages, 25 plates and 

 accompanying maps of 30 counties.* His works contain hundreds of geologic 

 sections and chemical analyses, and a vast store of information regarding 

 the stratigraphy, economic resources, paleontology, botany and natural 

 history of the State, but, in the opinion of the author of his biographyf "they 

 contained little that was new or impressive." Their main defect is repetition, 

 the same facts regarding the drift, the stratigraphy, the paleontology, the 

 caves and many other subjects being repeated again and again. This was 

 due to the treatment under county headings by a score of assistants, each 

 having his own views which he wished to get before the public. Could the eon- 

 tents of the Cox reports be assorted, assimilated, condensed and, under the 

 proper headings, be republished in one or two volumes, they would furnish a 

 work replete in interest and most valuable as a reference work in our schools 

 and colleges. 



After closing his work on the Indiana Survey in 1880, Cox opened an office 

 in New York City as a consulting geologist. He afterward moved to Albion, 

 Florida and became the geologist of a large company engaged in the mining 

 of phosphate. He died in Jacksonville, Florida, Jan. 6, 1907, at the ripe old 

 age of 86 years. 



*The counties mapped were Brown, Clark, Clay, Crawford, Daviess, Dearborn, 

 Dubois, Floyd, Gibson, Greene, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson, Knox, Lawrence. Martin, 

 Montgomery, Ohio, Owen, Parke, Perry, Pike, Scott, Sullivan, Switzerland, Warren, 

 Wayne, Vanderburgh, Vermillion, and Vigo. 



■j-Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, LII, 1910, p. 84. 



