AMERICAN GEOLOGY DECADE OF 1860-1869. 525 



A noble and unselfish man, who, as some one lias expressed it, "went 

 in and out of the houses of this State, making- friends of every man, 

 woman, and child he met." Farseeing, persistent, ever calm and judi- 

 cious in his work, yet light hearted and cheerful among his friends — 



his broad expanse of face, full of light, his eyes gleaming with kindliness, as well as 

 with shrewdness, and often with a right-merry twinkle; his genial smile, his frank 

 greeting, never marred by any hollow and flippant phrase of mere etiquette, but as 

 honest as it is cordial; his sympathy, so responsive yet so genuine; his massive 

 though quiet strength of purpose; and his self-contained, self-poised nature, all 

 crowned with boundless hopefulness, united to make his very presence an inspira- 

 tion and benediction. 



In the author's memory there are two men among American geolo- 

 gists who stand out as devotees of science, yet entirely free from the 

 narrowness of the specialist or the personal idiosyncrasies that so fre- 

 quently mar the character of men of their class. These two men are 

 George H. Cook and Edward Orton. They loved science for science 

 sake, yet did not close their eyes to its eco- 

 nomic bearing, nor call upon an overtaxed 

 public to support them in the work they 

 loved, regardless of its outcome. Never a 

 minister of the gospel had the interests of 

 his parishioners more at heart than these two 

 men that of the public they served. For 

 themselves they asked simply the privilege 

 of doing the work and doing it to the best of 

 their ability. 



B. F. Mudge, as State geologist, submitted 

 his First Annual Report on the Geology of 

 Kansas for the year 1864, in form of an 



OctaVO Volume of 56 pages, FlG - 76.-Benjamin Franklin 



Mudge 



^°^°I^-^^i ge in 1866. He announced the 



in Kansas, in 1864. 



lowest geological formation of the State to be the upper 

 portion of the Coal Measures, of which be gave a section in Leaven- 

 worth County. He accepted the identification of the Permian age of 

 the fossils which had been described b}' Meek. Hayden, and Swallow, 

 and noted the occurrence of the Triassic and probably the Jurassic 

 also, in a belt of territory crossing the Republican and Smoky Hill 

 valleys, and also the Cretaceous, the geographic limits of which had 

 not been worked out. He regarded the drift and erratic bowlders as 

 due to icebergs. 



Professor Mudge was born in Maine in 1817, and graduated at 



Wesleyan University, Connecticut, in 1840. After 

 sketch of Mudge. graduation he studied law and, being admitted to the 



bar, practiced his profession in Lynn. Massachusetts, 

 until 1859. During 1859 and 1860 he was employed as chemist in the 

 Chelsea, Massachusetts, and Breckinridge, Kentucky, oil refineries, 



