AMERICAN GEOLOGY DECADE OF 1850-1859. 451 



June 2, 1853, and March 26, 1854. On returning to Washington, 

 June 1, 1854, Marcou, on the plea of ill health, asked permission to 

 Marcou-s work in work U P nis results in Europe; and. acting apparently 

 Paci"fc t R aUroa t d h the unae r a misunderstanding, proceeded to pack his own 

 surveys, 1853. collections, together with others made by the party 

 under Captain Pope along the thirty-second parallel, and made prep- 

 arations to leave the country on September 27. This procedure seems, 

 however, to have displeased the then Secretary of War (Jefferson 

 Davis), who insisted, under date of September 25, that the report be 

 made out in this country. It being then too late, as claimed, for Mr. 

 Marcou to change his plans, he was allowed to depart, but instructed 

 under threat of prosecution to turn over all collections and notebooks, 

 the property of the Government, to the accredited representative of 

 the United States at Paris. Naturally this treatment aroused con- 

 siderable indignation on the part of Marcou, though it is doubtful if 

 he was justified in his subsequent proceedings. Such of the collections 

 and notes as were returned were placed in the hands of W. P. Blake 

 to be worked up, but, while there is no reason for criticising the latter, 

 the report was not all that could have been desired." It is a painful 

 fact, moreover, that none of Marcou's types were returned to America, 

 but were, by him, distributed to English and continental museums, 

 one of the collections being now in the possession of the Geological 

 Society of London. 



Before leaving for Europe, however, and before becoming aware of 

 the intentions of the Secretary of War, Marcou made two brief reports 

 or summaries— one of the route traversed by himself, and the other on 

 the materials collected by Captain Pope's party. These were pub- 

 lished in House Document No. 129 and were republished, together 

 with other papers by the same author, in Zurich in 1858, under the 

 title of Geology of North America, with Two Reports on the Prairies 

 of Arkansas and Texas, the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico and the 

 Sierra Nevada of California. The latter work was accompanied by a 

 geological map of the United States and a section across the country 

 from Fort Smith to the Pacific Ocean, the same being a reprint of a 

 map published by him in 1855 in the Bulletin of the Geological Society 

 of France and in the Annales des Mines for the same year. (Referred 

 to on p. 449.) It also contained a colored map of an area from 35 to 

 75 miles in width across New Mexico along the thirty-fifth parallel, 

 bearing date of 1857, and a reproduction of Maclure's map, the original 

 of which bore date of 1809. 



In this summary Marcou identified certain horizontal beds overlying 

 the Carboniferous limestones as Triassic, a formation w 7 hich on the 



«Marcou's original notes and Blake's translation of the same were published in 

 parallel columns in the third volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports. 



