10 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 105. 



instruction of his chief, D. D. Owen, as- 

 cended the White River to the Bad Lands 

 of Nebraska, along the southeast base 

 of the Black Hills, and made collections of 

 fossil vertebrates in the White River Mio- 

 cene, whose existence had first been brought 

 to notice through specimens sent in by the 

 parties connected with the American Fur 

 Trading Company. He also collected Mol- 

 lusca in the Cretaceous beds from Fort 

 Pierre up to a point 300 miles below the 

 mouth of the Yellowstone, and traced the 

 great lignite coal formation from there 

 nearly to the Yellowstone River. The col- 

 lections made at this time by Dr. Evans, to- 

 gether with those collected under the aus- 

 pices of the Smithsonian in 1850 by T. A. 

 Culbertson, and by Gen. Stuart Van Vliet 

 of the United States army, were described 

 in the Smithson contributions by Dr. Leidy 

 in 1852. In this famous memoir the since 

 well known forms Titanotherium and Oreodon 

 were first described, and the age of the beds 

 in which they occurred given as Eocene 

 Tertiary. 



1849-50. In 1849-50, under the orders of 

 Col. Abert, of the Topographical Engineers, 

 Lieut. Howard Stansbury made a survey 

 of Great Salt Lake, and explored its valley 

 and the surrounding mountains. No geol- 

 ogist was attached to his party, but his 

 notes and fossils were reported upon by Prof. 

 James Hall. 



Stansbury noted the widespread occur- 

 rence of coal beds and recognized their 

 future industrial importance, but does not 

 appear to have obtained any data to de- 

 termine their age. He brought in fossils 

 from the Carboniferous limestone in Kansas, 

 in Wyoming near Fort Laramie, and around 

 Salt Lake Basin. 



1851-52. In the summer of 1852 Captain 

 R. B. Marcy and Brevet Captain George B. 

 McClellan, of the United States Engineers, 

 made an exploration in the Red River coun- 

 try from Fort Smith, Ark., to Fort Belk- 



nap, on the Brazos River, Texas. Dr. G. G. 

 Shumard was appointed surgeon and natur- 

 alist to the expedition, and made collec- 

 tions which were submitted to various 

 specialists for examination and study. 

 Their reports are contained as appendices 

 in Captain Marcy 's report, published by act 

 of Congress. 



Hitchcock, the elder, reported on the 

 specimens collected, except the fossils which 

 were submitted to the latter's brother, Dr. 

 B. F. Shumard, for identification. Carbon- 

 iferous and Cretaceous forms were definitely 

 determined, but Hitchcock was somewhat 

 in doubt, owing to the imperfection of his 

 data, whether the coals of the Brazos River 

 were correctly assigned to the Carboniferous, 

 on account of the loose texture of the rocks, 

 and the fact that lignites of Tertiary and 

 Cretaceous age were known to exist further 

 north. The doubt is a reasonable one, for 

 these coal beds are at the present day the 

 most western workable coals of Carbonif- 

 erous age known on the continent. Hitch- 

 cock remarks on the evidence shown in the 

 canyons of the Llano Estacado, of the power 

 of erosion, and shows that it was not neces- 

 sary to resort, as Marcy was inclined to do, 

 to the shattering of the crust by some great 

 dynamic force to account for them. 



In 1853 were commenced the numerous 

 expeditions under the War Department to 

 explore a route for a transcontinental rail- 

 road from the Mississippi Valley to the Pa- 

 cific Ocean. To most of these parties a ge- 

 ologist or naturalist was attached, and the 

 results of their observations, together with 

 those of other naturalists, are found in the 

 thirteen quarto volumes of the Pacific Rail- 

 road reports. They include Marcou, New- 

 berry, Evans, Blake, Antisell, Gibbs and 

 Schiel. 



1853-4. Two reports made by Dr. John 

 Evans to Gov. Stevens upon the geology of 

 the northern route were lost in transit from 

 the field to Washington. Dr. Evans died 



