November 23, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



655 



Keller read a paper on ' Alcoholic Fermenta- 

 tion in the light of Chemical Investigation.' 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



CORRESPONDENCE RELATING TO A STUDY OF AN 

 AREA OF CRYSTALLINE ROCKS IN SOUTH- 

 WESTERN NEW • ENGLAND. 



To THE Editor of Science: I have recently 

 resigned my position upon the staff of the 

 United States Geological Survey for reasons 

 which are, I believe, of some interest to geol- 

 ogists throughout the country. I am, there- 

 fore, led to request the publication in Science 

 of the letter in which my resignation was 

 tendered. 



American geology has furnished many 

 knotty problems for solution, and workers 

 within the same or neighboring fields have not 

 infrequently and quite naturally come to hold 

 different interpretations of the same facts. 

 In more than a single instance during the 

 present administration of the survey, the geol- 

 ogists of the country have known that such 

 alternate views were held and shortly there- 

 after have learned that a ' conference ' had 

 been held and the problem quite expeditiously 

 * settled.' The methods by which such for- 

 ward strides have been taken can hardly fail 

 to interest those who have the advance of 

 science really at heart. 



Wm. H. Hobbs. 



University of Michigan, 

 Ann Arbor, Mich., Nov. 2, 1906. 

 Dr. C. D. Walcott, Director, 



U. S. Geological Survey, 

 Washington, D. C. 



Sir: I have the honor to resign my com- 

 mission as assistant geologist of the United 

 States Geological Survey. 



My connection with the geological staff of 

 the survey has now extended over more than 

 a score of years, and this action is taken after 

 much deliberation and as a protest against the 

 arbitrary and overbearing administration of 

 your chief executive, the geologist in charge 

 of geology. Permit me, therefore, to briefly 

 review for your consideration the later de- 

 velopments of my official work in their rela- 

 tion to survey administration. 



As you are doubtless fully aware, during 

 almost the entire period of my connection 

 with the survey my investigations have con- 

 sisted of a virtually independent study of the 

 structural geological problems offered by an 

 area of crystalline rocks in southwestern New 

 England. The history of American geology 

 shows that this region is, perhaps, the most 

 complex and obscure of any that has been 

 studied, and the divergence of views reached 

 by different workers and the obstinacy which 

 in the past has characterized the defense of 

 each, have caused it to be generally known as 

 the ' Battlefield of American Geology.' 



My earlier studies within the district fol- 

 lowed conventional lines, and I found after 

 repeated trials that the body of data collected 

 could not be brought within a system so 

 as to fit the accepted theories. Urgent requests 

 from the office of the director to prepare my 

 results for publication, I was obliged to meet 

 with the statement that I was not yet ready 

 to publish. 



In the continuation of the areal mapping 

 southward I encountered during the season of 

 1899 the small area of Newark rocks lying 

 within the valley of the Pomeraug River of 

 Connecticut and outlining a basin which was 

 found to be intersected by an intricate net- 

 work of nearly vertical faults. Believing that 

 in this basin lay the hitherto unsuspected key 

 to the structure of the larger district, ranch 

 attention was given to a study of the faults 

 in their relation to each other and to topog- 

 raphy and hydrography, not alone within the 

 Newark basin itself but in the surrounding 

 crystalline area as well. The results of this 

 study, which are published in the Twenty- 

 first Annual Report of the Director (part 3, 

 pp. 1-162), have, as suspected, afforded a clue 

 for working out the structure of the entire 

 district by showing that the faults so clearly 

 revealed within the Newark basin are also 

 present (though naturally less clearly re- 

 vealed) within the crystalline uplands. 



My colleague, Professor H. E. Gregory, of 

 Yale University, who has studied the area to 

 the east of my district, soon reached the same 

 conclusion and has expressed it in an official 

 report to the survey upon the Earmington 



