820 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



The two most important original contributions of the year 1833 were 

 Hitchcock's Massachusetts, already noted, and Isaac Lea's Contribu- 

 tions to Geology, the latter dealing - with the Tertiary of Alabama, 

 Maryland, and New Jersey. In Lea's work there were 

 ^o e alo?oTy!' i i b 8 U 3 t 3 0nS brought prominently forward for the first time, by an 

 American writer, the striking changes that had taken 

 place in tin 1 introduction of the Tertiary fauna and the close relation- 

 ship existing between that fauna and the fauna of the present day. 



Out of some two hundred and fifty species 

 of invertebrates found by Doctor Lea in 

 tin 1 bluffs at Claiborne, Alabama, two hun- 

 dred and nineteen were not referable to any 

 known species, i. e., were not found in any 

 of the beds older than Tertiary and were 

 new to science. It was in this work also 

 that the undoubted presence in America 

 of beds referable to the Eocene of Lyell 

 was recognized, although the character of 

 the fossils and the general position of the 

 beds had been already noted b} 7 Conrad 

 (p. 307)." 



The last named, the year following, marked 

 out the distribution of the Eocene in Mary- 

 land and noted the occurrence of Pliocene fossils overlying it at Vance's 

 ferry on the Santee River. The Fort Washington beds, formerly 

 regarded bv him as Eocene, he now suggested to be 



Conrad on the _ . 



Distribution of the more recent than Leas Claiborne beds, and perhaps 



Eocene, 1834. . f ' L r 



contemporaneous with the Miocene of Europe. 

 In 1834 there was organized the Geological Society of Pennsylvania. 

 According to its constitution: 



The objects of the society are declared to be to ascertain as far as possible the 

 nature and structure of the rock formations of the State; their connection or corn- 

 _ . „. parison with the other formations in the United States and of the 



Organization of the r 



Geological Society of rest of the world; the fossils they contain, their nature, positions, 



ennsy vama, . & ^ associations, and particularly the uses to which they can be 



applied in the arts, and their subserviency to the comforts and conveniences of man. 



This society continued in existence but four years, but served its 

 apparent purpose in bringing about the establishment, in 1836, of the 

 State geological survey with H. D. Rogers at its head. A single 



Fig. 23.— Isaac Lea. 



"This publication of Lea's led to a misunderstanding with Conrad, or rather with 

 Conrad's friends, Say and Morton, who felt that Doctor Lea was invading Conrad's 

 rights. Doctor Lea, however, worked only on material he had received from Judge 

 Tait, prior to Conrad's entry upon the field. (Sec I hill's Determination of Dates of 

 Publication of Conrad's Fossils of the Tertiary Formations. Bulletin of the Philo- 

 sophical Society of Washington, XII, 1893, pp. 215-240.) 



