HISTORICAL GEOLOGY Tl 



Silliman 's Students and Their Publications. Silli- 

 man's first student to take up geology as a profession was 

 Denison Olmstead (1791-1859), educator, chemist, and 

 geologist, who was graduated from Yale in 1813. Four 

 years later he was under special preparation with Silli- 

 man in mineralogy and geology, and in that year was 

 appointed professor of chemistry in the University of 

 North Carolina. In 1824-1825 Olmstead issued a Report 

 on the Geology of North Carolina, which is the first offi- 

 cial geological report issued by any state in America, 

 "a conspicuous and solitary instance," according to 

 Hitchcock's review of it (14, 230, 1828), "in which any 

 of our state governments have undertaken thoroughly to 

 develop their mineral resources." 



Amos Eaton (1776-1842), lawyer, botanist, surveyor, 

 and one of the founders of American geology, was a 

 graduate of "Williams College in the class of 1799. He 

 studied with Silliman in 1815, attending his lectures on 

 chemistry, geology, and mineralogy. He also enjoyed 

 access to the libraries of Silliman and of the bot- 

 anist, Levi Ives, in which works on botany and materia 

 inedica were prominent, and was a diligent student of the 

 College cabinet of minerals. He settled as a lawyer and 

 land agent in Catskill, New York, and here in 1810 he 

 gave a popular course of lectures on botany, believed to 

 have been the first attempted in the United States. 



In 1818 appeared Eaton's first noteworthy geological 

 publication, the Index to the Geology of the Northern 

 States, a text-book for the classes in geology at "Williams- 

 town. The controlling principle of this book was "Wer- 

 nerism, a false doctrine from which Eaton was never 

 able to free himself. This book was "written over 

 anew" and published in 1820. 



"While at Albany in 1818, Governor De Witt Clinton 

 asked Eaton to deliver a course of lectures on chemistry 

 and geology before the members of the legislature of 

 New York. It is believed that Eaton is the only Ameri- 

 can having this distinction, and because of it he became 

 acquainted with many leading men of the state, inter- 

 esting them in geology and its application to agriculture 

 by means of surveys. In this way was sown the idea 



