466 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



1901 Ruedemann, R. Hudson River Beds near Albany and their Taxonomic Equiva- 



lents. N. Y. State Mus. Bui. 42 



1902 Graptolite Facies of the Beekmantown Formation in Rensselaer County, 



N. Y. N. Y. State Paleontol. An. Rep't. N. Y. State Mus. Bui. 52, p.546 



1902 Growth and Development of Goniograptus thureaui McCoy. Ibid. p. 57 Q 



1903 Upper Cambric Horizon of Dictyonema flabellifonne in New York, 



N. Y. State Paleontol. An. Rep't. N. Y. State Mus. Bui. 09, p.934 



2 History of the study of the graptolites ' 

 In examining a piece of black Siluric shale, one often notices on its 

 surface peculiar figures which, by their form and substance suggest pencil 

 markings. They are nearly always toothed like a saw on one or both sides. 

 Linne described, together with other objects of different character, some 

 of these markings under the very appropriate generic term " Graptolithus." 

 This word has provided a name for the whole class of fossil organisms. 



The frequently leaflike shape, serrate margin and carbonaceous sub- 

 stance of the fragments which alone were known to the early observers, led 

 them to consider these bodies as of vegetable origin, a view held specially by 

 Bromdl and Brongniart, and also current among some of the members of 

 the Geological Survey of New York, who in their works refer to the 

 graptolites as " fucoids." 



* The early history of the study of graptolites has been exhaustively treated by James 

 Hall in his memoir, Graptolites of the Quebec Group [§ 8, Historical notice of the 

 genus Graptolithus, J). 59] and in his " Introduction to the study of the Graptolitidae" 

 [N. Y. State Cab. Nat. Hist. 20th An. Rep't]. These publications well depict the 

 progress in the conception of the graptolites from Linne onward and the state of our 

 knowledge of this group of fossils at the beginning of the last third of the last century. 

 Referring the reader to this earlier publication on the subject in a report from this 

 office, -we will mention only the most important events of the history up to Hall's 

 fundamental work and restrict ourselves to a fuller treatment of the later history. The 

 more important later investigations are also incidentally mentioned in Zittel's History of 

 Geology and Paleontology [IQOV]; and the latest discoveries the reader will find more 

 fully discussed in publications by C. Wiman [1895, 1896], A. Tomquist [1897], and the 

 present writer [1898J. 



