4 Eminent Living Geologists — Br. C. D. Walcott. 



under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for 

 the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men ". It was under 

 the direction of the Smithsonian Institution that Colonel Theodore 

 Roosevelt (1909-10) made his memorable African expedition, being 

 accompanied by representatives of the Institution and its branches. 

 The administration of the Smithsonian Institution includes the 

 Unites States National Museum, International Exchanges, Bureau of 

 American Ethnology, National Zoological Park, Astrophysical 

 Observatory, and International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, 

 besides the Aerodvnamical Laboratory and the National Gallery 

 of Art. 



Dr. Walcott is especially known as a student of the Lower 

 Palaeozoic (Cambrian) and pre-Palaeozoic (Algonkian) sedimentary 

 formations and included organic remains. Of his work he says 1 : 

 " My own investigations have been mainly in the Cambrian and 

 pre-Cambrian strata, and have involved new and somewhat startling 

 discoveries that helped to show how very much earlier life was 

 developed on our planet than we had previously supposed. These 

 researches have taken into consideration the records left on all the 

 continents and many of the great islands. Field-work, with compass, 

 hammer, and chisel, has been the rule, followed by laboratory and 

 critical comparison of many thousands of specimens of fossil genera 

 and species of ancient marine life, and often study of microscopic 

 sections of rocks and fossils in the hope of finding evidence of the 

 presence of minute and active bacterial and simple algal workers, 

 such as exist in modern seas and lakes, which by their united efforts 

 form great masses of the recent sea and lake deposits." 



He has worked up and correlated the Cambrian formations and 

 included faunas on the North American continent, has personally 

 discovered large and unique additions to the previously known 

 Cambrian faunas, and has published his researches on the Cambrian 

 faunas of the world ; studied and developed the history and 

 sedimentation of 30,000 feet of Algonkian sediments in western 

 North America, and discovered and published an account of the 

 organic remains in the Algonkian. An important find by Dr. "Walcott 

 a few years ago of a rich fossil locality in the Burgess shale, near 

 Field, British Columbia, Canada, has given the finest and largest 

 series of Middle Cambrian fossils yet discovered, and the finest 

 invertebrate fossils yet found in any formation, including — besides 

 brachiopods and trilobites — merostomes, holothurians, medusae, 

 annelids, brachiopods, malacostracans, etc. Many of the forms are 

 not yet described and illustrated. 



His many published works include especially studies of the 

 Cambrian Brachiopoda and Trilobita. A few titles, suggestive of 

 the scope of this work, are : Paleontology of the Eureka District, The 

 Cambrian Faunas of North America, The Fauna of the Lower Cambrian 

 or Olenellus Zone, Pre-Cambrian Fossiliferous Formations, Correlation 

 Papers, Cambrian Brachiopoda, The Cambrian Faunas of China, 

 Discovery of Algonkian Bacteria, Evidences of Primitive Life, and an 



1 Evidences of Primitive Life, loc. cit., pp. 235-6. 



