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A Sketch of the Scientific Work 



PROF, A, H, WORTHEN. 



BY CHARLES A. WHITE. 



Professor Worthen began the work which has made his name 

 so widely known at a time when little had yet been done in 

 geological science in our country, and he prosecuted it almost 

 without interruption until his death in 1888. Like most of the 

 earlier American naturalists, he began his scientific work as an 

 amateur, and under difficulties that the younger naturalists of 

 to-day, who have had the advantage of special training in 

 scientific schools, and who have free communication with a 

 multitude of scientific workers, cannot well understand. 



His home being upon the Lower Carboniferous rocks of west- 

 ern Illinois, his opportunities were good for the study of their 

 fossils and their stratigraphical relations; and it was doubtless 

 this circumstance that gave bent to his future career. In the 

 prosecution of his private studies he made many extensive jour- 

 neys in the region traversed by the Upper Mississippi river, and 

 brought together some of the finest collections of fossils from 

 the formations there that have ever been obtained. 



His first public work was performed sometime about the year 

 1853, as an assistant to Dr. J. G. Norwood, then State Geolo- 

 gist of Illinois, but little or no record of that work has been 

 preserved. In 1855 he was appointed assistant to Prof. James 

 Hall, then State Geologist of Iowa, and continued upon that 

 work until its suspension in 1858. Besides contributing two 

 important chapters to Professor Hall's report upon the geology 

 of that State, he aided largely in constructing the geological 

 section along the Mississippi river, from Lansing to St. Louis, 

 which is published in that report. 



