530 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



had there been seen either polished or striated rocks, such as are 

 almost constant accompaniments of glaciation elsewhere. It is almost 

 needless to add that this view is no longer held by anyone, the bowl- 

 ders supposed to have been erratics being merely bowlders of decom- 

 position and their distribution the work of gravity and water. 



In 1870 Hartt went again to Brazil, and in 1875, while professor of 

 geology at Cornell University, was appointed chief of the geological 

 commission of that country, with Richard Rathbun as assistant. He 

 died in 1878. 



An act of the State legislature of Minnesota approved March 2, 



1865, provided for the establishment of a State geological survey, but 



one which proved short-lived. Henry E. Eames was made State 



geologist, and during his term of office made two brief 



H. E. EamessWork & ° ' ° , 



in Minnesota, reports ot 23 and 58 pages respectively, both bearing 



on the title page the date of 1866. The work was 

 almost wholl}' of an economic nature. 



Eugene W. Hilgard, in an article in the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence for 1866, pointed out the great difference in the character of the 

 drift in the north and northeast and that of the west (Mississippi Val- 

 ley). He felt that the glacial theory alone, as then 

 "h^Drift! T866 8 ° n understood, could not account for these deposits north 

 of the Ohio any more than for the Osage sand delta 

 south of it. Though referring to Agassiz\s observation regarding 

 "the melting snow of the declining glacial epoch" and its instru- 

 mentality in forming river terraces, he adopted as more plausible the 

 idea first announced by Tourney to the effect that the southern drift 

 may have been formed in consequence of the sudden melting of the 

 northern glaciers, "such as would have resulted from a first rapid 

 depression of so large a mass of ice below the snow line." At first the 

 flood action would be violent, producing the deep erosion of the under- 

 lying formations and the transportation and redeposition in mass of 

 their materials. After the first rush, the stratified deposits would be 

 formed, mingled with more or less bowlder material from floating ice. 

 The influx of cold water from the north would, he thought, account 

 for the absence of signs of life in the deposits. The "grandly simple 

 means of a single elevation and redepression in the northern latitudes 

 * * * will equally satisfy the conditions required for the forma- 

 tion of the western and southern drift." 



W. C. Kerr, who succeeded Professor Emmons as State geologist of 

 North Carolina, received his commission on April 1, 1866, and con- 

 tinued in service until the time of his death, in 1885. 



Kerr's Geological , , T , . , , . T 



work in North His first Report of 1 rogress, submitted in January, 



Carolina, 1866-1869. „„„„ l . I K „ . , . , ,? 



1867, was an octavo volume ot 56 pages, in which the 

 purposes of the survey were set forth and a summaiy of the geology 

 of the western part of the State given, so far as known. The rocks of 



