AMERICAN" GEOLOGY — DECADE OF 1840-1849. 



405 



Fig. 43.— John Bulklev Perry. 



Perry read a paper on glacial phenomena, in which he referred to these 

 trains incidentally, and argued that they were part of the true glacial 



drift — morainal material deposited by the melting of 

 rde°a f s J i8 B 70 Perry ' s the ice sheet of the glacial epoch. 



Again, in 1878, Mr. E. R. Benton studied the trains 

 in considerable detail, and in the Bulletin 

 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 

 published a detailed description and map 



of the region, from which 



E.R. Benton's Work, the Qne ffiyen herewith IS 



reproduced. Benton took 

 the ground that the bowlders were de- 

 posited by the ice sheet of the glacial 

 period at the time of its final melting, 

 the direction of the stria? on the under- 

 lying rocks being here essentially the same 

 as that of the bowlder trains. In con- 

 nection with his investigations, Benton 

 wrote to Prof. W. B. Rogers concerning 

 the views above advocated by him, and 

 received in reply the letter from which the following abstract is taken: 



At that time (i. e., when this paper was written) paroxysmal dynamics had still 

 many advocates, and the attempted explanation may he interesting as a specimen of 

 the hold type of speculation in which some of the early geologists sometimes ventured 

 to indulge. But, for myself, I may say that long years of observation and study make 

 me more distrustful of our knowledge of causes and more willing, in geology as in 

 other things, to labor and wait. 



It will be remembered that in 1844 Michael Tuomey was appointed 



State geologist of South Carolina, a position which he continued to 



hold until his appointment to the chair of geology, mineralogy, and 



agricultural chemistry in the State University of 



Tuomey's Final « i i 



Report on the Geology A la Dama. 



i848 U ar ° ma ' A preliminary report has already been noted (p. 387). 



The final report appeared in the form of a volume of 

 293 pages in 1848. This, with the exception of the volume on the 

 fossils of South Carolina, of which he and Doctor Holmes were joint 

 authors, was the most systematic and pretentious of his publications. 

 This survey, like that of many of its predecessors in other States, 

 was undertaken with a view of developing the agricultural resources 

 of the State. The condition of the public mind toward pure science 

 at the time is well reflected in the almost pathetic postscript of Mr. 

 Tuomey to his preface, in which he simply states that, while the 

 report was passing through the press, he was informed that the plates 

 containing figures of fossils had not been considered essential by the 

 committee on publication and were therefore omitted. The work 



