February 



.] 



SCIENCE. 



67 



material detached from it than the other. This is the whole 

 question iu a nut shell; certain Washington geologists claim to 

 know everything about palaeolithic man, and that those who 

 disagree with them are utterly ignorant of the subject. But they 

 have put forward this preposterous claim in the most offensive 

 and contemptuous manner possible, using language in regard to 

 those who differ from them such as no gentleman would employ, 

 and wrapping up their conceited ignorance in a cloud of fustian, 

 which appears to pass for philosophical writing in the atmosphere 

 which surrounds them. That this style of ''argument" is con- 

 fined to a very limited circle would seem to show either that the 

 word of command has been given out from some autocratic 

 source, which they dare not disobey, or that they are actuated by 

 jealousy at the success that has crowned the labors of those who 

 maintain the existence of palaeolithic man in North America. 



Only a jury of the acknowledged pre-historic archteologists of 

 the world is competent to pronounce judgment upon this ques- 

 tion. Heney W. Hatnes. 



Boston, Ma33., Jan. 24. 



Criticism of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



The frequent complimentary notices and encomiums upon the 

 U. S. Geological Survey that have appeared in Science without 

 any adverse criticisms, might lead one not conversant with the 

 subject to suppose that the Survey reflects the geological learning 

 of this country, or that it is rapidly discovering the resources, or 

 in some other way is giving quid pro quo for the money ex- 

 pended. 



Looking upon the Survey as a public matter, it is a proper sub- 

 ject of criticism, by any citizen, and among those who have given 

 it any attention, with whom I converse or correspond, not one 

 expresses satisfaction, and generally they have only words of se- 

 vere condemnation. 



The Director has called special attention to it by his article in 

 Science of Jan. 13, and stated his claims for the work accom- 

 plished. He says: 



" When the bureau was instituted, in 1879, it was found at the 

 outset that there were no adequate maps of the regions selected 

 for survey ; and it soon became evident that the geologic work 

 could not be carried on without maps showing the relief of the 

 land as well as the hydrography and culture. Accordingly, 

 topographic surveys were instituted in each of the regions selected 

 for examination. At first these surveys were planned to meet 

 immediate needs, and the methods of mapping were not system- 

 ized or unified; the scales were divei'se and the methods various; 

 the areas were selected by geologic needs and were not fitted to a 

 general scheme for the geologic map of the country, and the re- 

 sulting maps were discordant in their conventions. At this stage 

 the topographic surveys were executed under the direction of the 

 chiefs of the geologic divisions. After two or three years of trial 

 this form of organization was found unsatisfactory, and the 

 topographic surveys were separated from the geologic work and 

 assigned to a geographic division, which has ever since been 

 maintained." 



In short, he says, at the outset, it soon became evident that the 

 geological work could not be carried on without maps made by a 

 topographical survey and accordingly the topographical surveys 

 were instituted, but after two or three years of trial this form of 

 organization was found unsatisfactory, and the topographical 

 surveys were separated from the geological work. I will agree 

 with him that, for the first two or three years, " the methods of 

 mapping were not systemized or unified," and I am willing to 

 believe they were of little or no geological value, and I am willing 

 to agree that after two or three years of experience and study he 

 ascertained that a topographical survey belongs to geographical 

 work; but there are two matters ai'ising from his statement that 

 are not exactly clear, viz. : 



1. If it was evident, at the outset, that geological work could 

 not be carried on without a topographical survey, why was it 

 necessary, within two or three years, to separate the topographi- 

 cal surveys from the geological work ? 



2. Was there, at the outset, any intelligent geologist or geog- 

 rapher, in the United States, not connected with theU. S. Survey, 

 who did not know that topographical surveys belong to geographi- 

 cal work? 



We do not desire any play on words and, therefore, come at 

 once to the question, What geological work has been done by the 

 Survey that is of any general benefit to the science, or that is of 

 any economical value, or that is of any general application to the 

 stratified rocks of the continent? For my part, having examined 

 nine of the Annual Reports, and observed nothing of general sci- 

 entific value or utility (excluding a few definitions of fossils), I 

 would answer this question negatively. And if there is work 

 that might possess some geological value as a preliminary recon- 

 noissance, such work is more than destroyed by inexcusable pro- 

 visional names for the groups, without characterizing them or 

 stating the fossils by which alone their places in the geological 

 column are to be determined. (I do not use the word "group" 

 in the sense in which it is used, generally, in the survey, but I 

 use it in its established geological sense.) 



A lawyer in any State can go into any court in any other State 

 or into any of the courts of the United States or into those of 

 Canada or England and hear and understand the technical words 

 of the science. No word will be used by any judge or attorney 

 with which he is not familiar and it will be used in the exact le- 

 gal sense in which he learned it and used it at home. More law 

 books have been published than belong to all the sciences of 

 natural history combined, but no one in centuries has proposed a 

 substitute or provisional word for any technical one in use, 

 though it cannot be denied that more expressive or euphonious 

 words might, in some instances, be proposed. Blackstone made 

 his fame by abstracting the technical definitions from the opinions 

 of the coiirts, as written in the books, with full references and 

 citations to his authorities, and it is for that reason alone that 

 the use of his commentaries can be justified in any law school in 

 this country. The whole value of precedents and court reports 

 is in the fixity of the technical words used and their established 

 definitions. What the science of geology demands is fixity in 

 the names of the subdivisions of the stratified rocks, and the 

 accurate determination of the fossils that characterize each sub- 

 division, for by the fossils alone can the subdivisions be deter- 

 mined. And these demands have been wholly disregarded amA 

 set aside by the U. S. Survey since 1879, and we have synonym 

 after synonym for equivalent rocks, vague and worthless defini- 

 tions, and what seems to me the culmination of absurdity if not 

 crime against the progress of geological knowledge, the preten- 

 sion that they are developing a " New Geology." 



This matter of nomenclature alone, in my opinion, will ever- 

 lastingly condemn the Survey, so far as it deals with stratigraphi- 

 cal geology, and make students of the science wish there had 

 been some power to suppress the publication even if it was neces- 

 sary to expend the appropriations. It would have been better to 

 have given the money to the printer and consigned the strati- 

 graphical manuscript to the flames. 



But, aside from the questions of nomenclature, that are so inti- 

 mately connected with learning, and so vital to the understanding 

 of any subject, there are numerous fundamental errors. If any 

 one will turn to page 373 of the Seventh Annual Report, under 

 the head of " Paleontological Characters as a Basis for Classifi- 

 cation," he may read pages in consecutive connection where 

 every idea expressed will be recognized as absolutely erroneous 

 by any competent paleontologist. I will quote only a single sen- 

 tence. He says : 



" We have now constantly to remember that paleontology is 

 based wholly upon stratigraphy, and consequently that the con- 

 clusions that we would draw from our fossils must constantly be 

 checked by stratigraphical observations." 



This statement is made, in the face of the fact, that no species 

 in the great Subkingdom Echinodermata is known to have a ver- 

 tical range of 500 feet, in the palceozoio rocks of North America; 

 that not one is known to cross the line subdividing the groups of 

 rocks recognized in the Geological Surveys of New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Illinois, Indiana, or Canada; and in the face of the 

 fact, that science has not recognized a group of rocks within the 



