AMERICAN GEOLOGY KAToNIAN ERA, 1820—1829. 



2<>1 



of Cape Sable;" and miscellaneous notes on the geology and mineral- 

 ogy of North America from the same publishers/' There was also 

 given a description of a collection of North American minerals. A 

 little over four pages were devoted to a description of the marbles of 

 Pennsylvania; Connecticut; Vermont; Stockbridge, Massachusetts; 

 and Thoraaston, Maine, the descriptions being naturally limited to 

 specimens and not to their occurrence in the field. 



In 18^^ Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, 



published in the American -Journal of Science an article of nearly 



forty pages, giving his views on volcanoes and volcanic substances. 



He defined a volcano as a natural vent in the crust of 



Thomas Cooper's , 



ideas Concerning the earth, made by subterranean fires to anord exit 



Volcanoes, 1822. i i-i , , , 



tor gases, vapors, and solid substances that have been 

 exposed to the action of intense heat in the bowels of the earth. The 

 seat of the volcano he believed to be below or within the oldest gran- 

 ite. In action, the volcano is described as giving off smoke and flame 

 derived from contact with coal strata, the eruption being usually 

 accompanied by electric light, the source of which he acknowledged 

 as problematical. Compared with all this 

 error, his recognition as lavas of the por- 

 phyries in the vicinity of Boston and the 

 Triassic traps of the eastern United States 

 stands out in remarkable contrast. 



Cooper, or '"Old Coot, 1 ' as he was called 

 during the period of his activity at the 

 South, seems to have been a queer char- 

 acter — " a learned, ingenious, scientific, and 

 talented madcap,' 1 as President Adams is 

 said to have called him. He 

 sketch of Cooper. was not a geologist, except- 

 ing in books, but rather an 

 educator and theorist. He was born in 

 London in 1759 and educated at Oxford, 

 where he paid chief attention to the classics, though his inclination 

 was for the sciences. He came to America in 1795 and settled down 

 for a time to the practice of law at Northampton, Pennsylvania. 



A restless, aggressive spirit soon took him into the political field, 

 where the violence of his newspaper attacks ca'used him at one time 

 to be imprisoned for six months and fined. After his release he was 

 appointed first land commissioner and then judge, being removed 

 from the latter office for arbitrary conduct. He then turned his 

 attention to chemistry and became in turn professor of chemistry in 

 Dickinson College in Carlisle, professor of chemistry and mineralogy 

 in the Universit}^ of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and professor of 



Fig. 13. — Thomas Cooper. 



" American Journal of Science, 1821. 



b Volume IV, 1822, No. 2. 



