Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. 146 



bergs, affording useful facts connected with the theory of drift. At the 

 preceding meeting Mr. Couthouy it will be remembered read an inter- 

 esting paper, descriptive of some of the phenomena of icebergs as wit- 

 nessed by himself at various times. This paper, published in our pro- 

 ceedings, contains important statements in relation to the partial rotation 

 of icebergs when aground. 



Among the chemico-geological communications recently made to the 

 Association, is one by Prof. Lewis C. Beck on the bituminous matter in 

 several of the limestones and sandstones of New York, and another by 

 Dr. Charles T. Jackson, on the organic matters of soils. 



PRESENT STATE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE FORMATIONS OF THE 

 UNITED STATES. 



I shall now review as briefly as practicable, the geology of this coun- 

 try, and show the development which it has reached through the re- 

 searches above cited, through those of earlier date and those not yet in 

 print. In taking such a survey we shall find that, while the materials 

 already gathered, form a valuable accession to the positive geology of 

 our times, some of the conclusions arrived at, and many of the ques- 

 tions presented, bear upon some of the most fundamental generaliza- 

 tions of the science. 



Let us enquire in the first place, what we know touching our pal(2o- 

 zoic strata, the sediments of that enormous sea, which filling once the 

 whole interior of our continent, has its history, despite of all catastrophes, 

 beautifully recorded in the vast sheets of matter, which from beyond the 

 lakes to Alabama, and from the Atlantic slope to the far Missouri, tell 

 of its depths and changes, its earthquakes, its intervals of long repose, 

 and the structure and mode of life of its inhabitants. As the most ex- 

 panded, and by far the most complicated in its outcrops of all the sys- 

 tems of strata this side of the Mississippi, it may be well to ascertain 

 over how wide an area we have succeeded in tracing and mapping its 

 numerous subordinate formations, and as the repository of a host of or- 

 ganic relics, leading us back to the extreme dawn of animal and veget- 

 able life, and forward through a long series of successive creations, it 

 becomes of the highest interest to learn how far we have advanced in 

 exploring its fossils, and in framing in accordance with their distribution, 

 a classification of the formations which shall be widely applicable. 



The outcrops then of these vast formations, commencing at the north- 

 east in Vermont, have been traced through the western border of Mas- 

 sachusetts by Hitchcock, and westward through New York by Emmons, 



Vol. XLvii, No. 1.— April-June, 1844. 19 



