AMERICAN GEOLOGY DECADE OF 1850-1859. 4V>7 



Lesquereux, in connection with his paleobotanical work, took 

 occasion to announce his adherence to the view that the coals were the 

 result of the accumulation of sphagnous mosses, in place, i. e., were 

 not drift. He also introduced a chapter on the origin of prairies, in 

 which he took the ground " that all the prairies of the Mississippi 

 Valley were formed through the slow recession of sheets of water of 

 varying extent, whereby the existing lakes were gradually transformed 

 into swamps and bogs and ultimately into dry land. The black sur- 

 face soil of the prairies he thought to be due to the growth and decom- 

 position of bog vegetation, conferva 1 , etc.-' With this view Worthen, 

 in the fifth volume of the reports, did not wholly agree. No one 

 theory, he thought, was sufficient to explain all the phenomena noted, 

 though the chief cause of the treelessness of the prairies he felt to be 

 due to the character of the soil itself. The loess Worthen regarded as 

 of fluviatile origin. Concerning the origin of the drift as a whole, he 

 wrote: 



Thus it will be seen that the first and greatest of the drift forces was the glacier; 

 then the floating iceberg and ice field produced their results, carrying the large 

 bowlders from place to place and dropping them over the ice-cold seas; and lastly, 

 the wave and current force of water, after the ice had in part or altogether melted, 

 leaving the loose clays, sands, and subsoils, substantially as we rind them. 



In his second report, published in 1866, Worthen adhered to the 

 determination first published in the Transactions of the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Sciences, [865, to call by tin 1 name of the Cincinnati group 

 the rocks of the State grouped by Hall under the name of Hudson 

 River. This volume was devoted wholly to the paleontology of the 

 State, and contained articles by Newberry, Meek, Worthen. and Les- 

 quereux. Newberry, in his work on the fossil fishes, accounted for 

 the abundance of some of these forms in certain strata as due perhaps 

 to the sudden introduction of "heated waters or noxious gases ' , in 

 the Carboniferous seas where these forms lived. 



The third volume appeared in 1868, and was given up to a discus- 

 sion of the geology of the various counties, with oaleontology by 

 Meek and Worthen. 



The fourth volume appeared in 1870. It was devoted quite largely 

 to paleobotany by Lesquereux, vertebrate paleontology by Newberry 

 and Worthen, and descriptive geology of the various counties by 

 Worthen, Bannister, Bradley, and Green. 



Worthen was born in Vermont in 1813, and educated in the com- 

 mon schools and the local academy. In 1834 he emigrated to Ken- 

 tucky, and in 1836 removed thence to Warsaw, Illinois, where he 

 made his permanent home. Until 1855 he was engaged 

 sketch of worthen. in mercantile pursuits, but devoted all his spare time 

 to a study of the local geology, to which he was at- 

 tracted by the abundant fossil remains for which the region was noted. 

 nat Mrs 1904 32 



