DAVID DALE OWEN. 505 



can Geologist* states: "To this latter Dr. Owen subse- 

 quently added largely, by purchase from Dr. Krantz, of Ger- 

 many, illustrative fossils of every period; among others an 

 ichthyosaurus, from the Lias of Wiirtemberg, larger than the 

 one in the British Museum. Another interesting and valuable 

 specimen was a nearly complete skeleton of a gigantic mega- 

 theroid animal (the Megalonyx) which he exhumed near Hen- 

 derson, Ky. The entire collection some years after Dr. Owen's 

 death was purchased by the Indiana University, and unfortu- 

 nately nearly all consumed by fire, when the new university 

 building, including the museum, laboratory, and library, was 

 destroyed." 



Dr. Owen was again called into the service of the Govern- 

 ment in 1847, being appointed United States Geologist and 

 directed to make a survey of the Chippeway land district. His 

 Preliminary Report, made in the following year to the Hon. 

 R. M. Young, then Commissioner of the Land Office, was a 

 document of one hundred and thirty-four octavo pages, and 

 was accompanied by three hundred and twenty-three litho- 

 graphs from his own sketches, and numerous maps, diagrams, 

 etc. 



The scope of his examination was then enlarged so as to 

 embrace a fuller survey of portions of the Northwest Terri- 

 tory, lying mainly within the present States of Wisconsin, 

 Iowa, and Minnesota. This task required five years of field 

 work and a final year of laboratory and office work, ending 

 with the year 1852. A large appropriation was made by Con- 

 gress for illustrating and printing Owen's report, all the details 

 of publication being committed to him. The result was a finely 

 illustrated quarto volume of six hundred and thirty-eight 

 pages, many of the illustrations being from the original draw- 

 ings of Dr. Owen, who had great facility in sketching. In this 

 volume he applied for the first time the medal-ruling style of 

 engraving to cuts of fossils. 



In an article on Geological Surveys in Missouri Mr. Arthur 

 Winslow says of Owen's reports up to this time: "These 

 reports supplied the guiding lines along which later strati- 



* Sketch of the Life of David Dale Owen, M. D., August, 1889, to which 

 source acknowledgment is due for a large portion of the material entering into 

 the present account. 

 33 



