382 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



Matners assistants were 1 the S. P. Rildreth, just mentioned, who 

 early resigned on account of ill health; J. P. Kirtland, Dr. John 

 Locke, C. Briggs, jr., J. W. Foster, and Charles Whittlesey, the last 

 named in charge of topographic work. Mather's own work was 

 largely of an economic character, and he showed here as in his later 

 work on the New York survey, a lack of discrimination or ability to 

 judge of the comparative value of the different subjects with which 

 he had to deal. 



Hildreth's report must be read with a certain amount of allowance, 

 since his ill health and consequent resignation precluded him from 

 making certain possible modifications of his earlier statements. He 

 described the occurrence of New Red sandstone, Lias, Oolite, etc., over- 

 lying the coal, and dwelt to a considerable extent upon the possible 

 value of the buhrstone and also upon the salt springs. 



Locke's report, comprising pages 201-286 in the second annual, was 

 by far the most satisfactory, showing a much broader grasp of the 

 general subject than that of any of his associates. He described the 

 locks below the coal formation as having evidently been deposited in 

 the bed of a deep primitive ocean, though he failed to realize, or at 

 least ignored, the value of the fossil remains in which the rocks 

 abounded, his classification being wholly lithological. As pointed out 

 by Orton, moreover, he failed to correlate the members of the series 

 which he found with those of the same series elsewhere. 



He noted the immense amount of drift material, and also the 

 scratched and grooved surface of the underlying rock, describing it 

 as '"planished as if b} r the friction of some heavy body moving over 

 it and marked by parallel grooves. 1 "' He regarded such as having 

 probably been formed by icebergs floating over the terrace and drag- 

 ging gravel and bowlders frozen into their lower surface. In this he 

 followed Hitchcock. 



Briggs's reports, comprising some seventy pages of the first and sec- 

 ond annuals, contained nothing of more than very local interest. A sec- 

 tion was given showing the relative position and thickness of the strata 

 in the counties of Wood, Crawford, Athens, Hocking, and Tuscarawas, 

 but no attempt was made to refer them to any particular geological 

 horizon, nor was the value of fossils recognized at all. In fact, there 

 was but the briefest allusion to fossils, excepting as curiosities. This 

 seems the more remarkable, in the case of Locke as well, when we con- 

 sider that these regions are peculiarly prolific in invertebrate remains 

 and the very important role such have since been made to play. 



To Foster was assigned the geology of Muskingum County and parts 

 of Licking and Franklin counties. He classified the rocks of the 

 various formations of these regions as Alluvium, Tertiary, Coal Meas- 

 ures, fine-grained sandstone, shale, and Mountain limestone, and noted 

 the presence of remains of a mastodon and acasteroides in the alluvium. 



