260 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



being highly successful, rising - rapidly in public confidence and hold- 

 ing the highest professional rank in the city. When the American 

 Society of Dental Surgeons was established, he became its first presi- 

 dent. Aside from his profession he devoted himself to studies in 

 physiology and pathology, as well as geology. 



To Volney and Mitchill's hypotheses (mentioned on p. 232) to the 



effect that the deep gorge of the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, of the 



Hudson at West Point, the Delaware near Easton, the Schuylkill 



northwest of Hamburg, and the Susquehanna below 



Wilson's Exceptions l , 



to Hypotheses of Harnsburg, were torn open by the pressure of the 



VWtchill 1821 ■ 



waters of Lake Ontario, Mr. J. W. Wilson, in the 

 American Journal of Science for 1821, took exception. He gave 

 altitudes showing that the waters of the supposed lake could never 

 have risen within 500 feet of the summit of the highlands at West 

 Point without discharging over the summits of the mountains at 

 Harrisburg; or through Lake Champlain into the Sorel and St. Law- 

 rence before rising within 1,400 feet of Butler Hill, near West Point. 

 These were good arguments, but the explanations offered by Mr. 

 Wilson were in themselves by no means satisfactory. "Is not" he 

 wrote "the best theory of the earth, that the Creator, in the begin- 

 ning, at least at the general deluge, formed it with all its present 

 grand characteristic features ? " To this the editor (Silliman) responded 

 in a footnote that "The Creator undoubtedly brought all matter into 

 being and established the laws which govern it; the operation of those 

 laws then is always a fair subject of discussion, and although it is the 

 shortest it is not the most instructive course to out the knot where it 

 may be untied" 



Early accounts of the geology and mineralogy of North America 

 were eagerly seized upon by foreign scientists, as well as those inter- 

 ested from a spirit of gain only. Thus, in 1822 there was published 

 in Hamburg, in the form of a small octavo pamphlet of 124 pages, a 

 series of extracts from the American Journal of Science and Journal 

 of the Academy of Natural Sciences, entitled Beitrage Zur Mineral- 

 ogie u. Geologie ' des Nordlichen America's nach/ Amerikanischen 

 Zeitschriften bearbeitet von Heinrich von Struve. The articles 

 abstracted were Schoolcraft's account of the native copper on the north 

 shores of Lake Superior;" A. G. Jessup's geological and mineralogical 

 observations on a portion of the northern border of New York;' 

 Vanuxem's description and analyses of the Wollastonite (Taffelspath's) 

 of Willsborough, New York; 7 ' John Dixon's mineralogical and geo- 

 logical observations on a part of North and South Carolina; Gerard 

 Troost's description of a mineral resembling amber found in the sands 



" American Journal of Science, III, 1821, No. 2. 



''Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, December, 1821, 



