ISAAC LEA. 263 



out on a map the coal fields of the United States as they were 

 then known. After several hours spent in the examination of 

 the matter, Dr. Buckland taking notes all the time, the dis- 

 tinguished geologist remarked, as he took his leave to meet an 

 engagement, that England had enough coal to supply the 

 United States when its supply should fail. Dr. Lea replied 

 that the quantity of anthracite and bituminous coal was almost 

 unlimited in North America, and promised to send him maps 

 and sections that would satisfy him upon the subject. He ful- 

 filled his promise after he returned home, and, upon the 

 evidence thus afforded, Dr. Buckland presented a paper to 

 the next meeting of the British Association on the extent of 

 our coal supply. At the British Museum, by the request of Dr. 

 Gray, Dr. Lea went over the collection of the Unionidce, ar- 

 ranged and named them correctly, and added some new species 

 from the United States. He called, in Paris, on Baron Ferus- 

 sac, the eminent student of terrestrial and fluviatile mollusca, 

 who was then engaged in preparing his great work on the 

 Unionidce. During the conversation the baron " complimented 

 Dr. Lea by saying that he could not go on with his work until 

 he (Dr. Lea) had finished his memoirs." Dr. Lea afterward 

 spent several hours in going over the baron's collections, 

 which contained Unionidce. from Brazil, Syria, Turkey, and 

 Egypt, and rearranging it, cutting down the species and form- 

 ing numerous synonyms. Afterward, he met Blainville, Ferus- 

 sac, and others at the Jardin des Plantes, to arrange and name 

 all the Unionidce. of the collection there, to which he added 

 fourteen species. From Studer, the elder, in Berne, he received 

 the last copy in the author's possession of his work on the land 

 and fresh-water shells of Switzerland, and compliments on the 

 papers he had himself written. At Paris, again, he examined 

 the Unionidce in the Due de Rivoli's collection, which contained 

 all those of Lamarck, and was thereby able to identify all of 

 Lamarck's species in his subsequent memoir. Calling on M. 

 Gay by invitation, he was shown all the mollusca which that 

 naturalist had collected in his travels, and was invited to select 

 a specimen of each. Thus he found the most eminent natu- 

 ralists everywhere, on the strength of the few papers he had 

 published on American mollusca, ready to welcome him as one 

 of themselves, and to receive instruction from him. Their 

 general message to him was to go on with the investigations 



