PREFATORY NOTE. 



The work herewith presented Is in part an outgrowth of a series of 

 lectures to students in geology in Columbian (now George Washing- 

 ton) University, though many of the facts were gathered while look- 

 ing up the records of the early Government surveys, with a view of 

 ascertaining the final disposition of their collections. No idea was at 

 first entertained of putting the matter in book form, but as material 

 gradually accumulated the advisability of making it a permanent 

 record became apparent. On the supposition that it was a desirable 

 thing to do at all, it is perhaps fortunate that the idea of a fairly con 

 secutive history of the rise and progress of American geology was. 

 like the science itself, a matter of growth, as the magnitude of the 

 task would certainly have deterred from undertaking it one whose 

 main opportunity lay in the improvement of odd moments. 



As to the mode of presentation of the subject: It has been the 

 writer's desire to do this in a manner such as should show not merely 

 what has been done, by whom, and how it has been done, but the 

 gradual growth of the science and the development of powers of 

 observation and deduction as well. To do this satisfactorily, no other 

 arrangement than a chronological one seemed possible, though it must 

 be confessed that' a topical one would have been easier to handle and 

 could, perhaps, have been made more readable. In several instances, 

 indeed, the topical treatment has been adopted, as in the chapters on 

 the Eozoon and the Taconic question. Should it appear that the method 

 is essentially similar to that adopted by Sir Archibald Geikie in his 

 Founders of Geology, the writer has only to express the regret that 

 the imitation is so crude. 



Let no one for a moment feel that the writer has called attention to the 

 errors and crudities of observation and deduction of the early workers in 

 a spirit of levity. Far from that. These men were pioneers. They had 

 received little or no preliminary training along these special lines, and 

 had access to but few books. The information with which the geolo- 

 gist of to-day begins his career did not then exist, and an effort has 

 here been made to show by what years of toil each new fact has been 

 unearthed, cleansed of the debris which obscured its outlines, and 

 treasured up in such form that it is now possible for the student, in a 

 few short years, to encompass the garnerings of a century. 



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