MEMOIR OF JAMES HALL 431 



attempts to direct the survey of one commonwealth while residing in 

 another, though he was able to publish important reports. He con- 

 tributed an elaborate memoir to the Canada Survey publications. In 

 later years his excursions into other states were confined to paleonto- 

 logieal work, much of which was published jointly by himself and Pro- 

 fessor R. P. Whitfield, the more important memoirs being those upon 

 Ohio, Kentucky, and the Fortieth Parallel. 



At the very outset of his career, when only 21 years old, he succeeded 

 in determining the position of our Pennsylvania anthracites in the geo- 

 logical column. Eaton, in the second edition of his text-book, refers to 

 proofs obtained at Carbondale by his pupils in 1832, showing the Amer- 

 ican coals, " bituminous and anasphalt," to be equivalent to those of 

 Europe. The study of those fossils was by Hall, who made still further 

 collections of coal plants, and determined 25 species. Eaton referred to 

 this work in 1833 as the joint work of himself and Mr Hall. " It was 

 the intention of Mr Hall and myself to have determined the names of 

 all which had been determined by M. Brogniart, and to have given litho- 

 graphic figures of the remainder, but we are prevented by other engage- 

 ments."' ''^^ At that time Hall was applying his knowledge of recent 

 botany to paleobotany, so that he was enabled to give to Eaton the 

 generalization which had escaped the Pennsylvania geologists, for, accord- 

 ing to Lesley, even 3 years later, Taylor and others " drew a sharp dis- 

 tinction in age between Broad Top and Alleghany Mountain coal, and 

 even Rogers expressed a doubt of their identity in an annual report."! 



Professor Hall's influence upon American geology began with his 

 reports. One must concede in all fairness that some of Professor Hall's 

 friends in the earlier days gave him rather more credit for the New York 

 state work than was properly his share, much more indeed than he ever 

 claimed, the result being that in the minds of many he is thought to be 

 entitled to the whole credit for the subdivision of the column. Conrad, 

 Vanuxem, Eaton, and Emmons did good work ; Conrad and Vanuxem 

 on, the survey did great work, which M^ent far toward determining the 

 section. Let us not fail to honor the men who were Hall's associates on 

 that survey. Because they were not great in so many ways as Hall, they 

 fall, as it were, deeply into shadow, and we are liable to overlook their 

 excellence ; the more so because nearly every one of them died before 

 the younger generation of geologists were out of swaddling clothes, 

 and to most of us they are but names. 



Yet the credit for final, authoritative determination of the column 

 must be given to Hall and to him alone. AVith the rest he had labored 



*Amer. Jour. Science, vol. xxiii, p. 399. 



t Second Geol. Surv. of Pennsylvania, Report A, p. 18. 



