96 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



In many, probably in most, expositions of the science of geology 

 and paleontology, prepared for the use of students and general 

 readers, the so-called imperfections in the record of past life are 

 brought out with a vivid intensity. These expositions are, I think, 

 m large part due to a more or less unconsciously apologetic attitude 

 on the part of the authors, as though they were in some way, being 

 apostles of the science, likely to be held to account for any over- 

 statement of its claims; and these attorneys in bankruptcy are not 

 inaptly, to my mind, comparable to buyers of ancient but damaged 

 rugs, torn, raveled, worn bare of their patterns : ostentatiously de- 

 claring their defects while overlooking the beauty, the symbolism, 

 the perfection of the design seen clear through all the ravages made 

 by the wear of time. 



I find myself out of sympathy with such deprecating portraitures. 

 Neither my experience nor my philosophy finds support for pes- 

 simistic conceptions of the ultimate hope of completing our tapes- 

 tries from the patterns we know and the threads we are yet to pick 

 up. For a few years, as we reckon human history, we have 

 scratched with our hammers some surface exposures of the tablets 

 of the law in parts of the earth most easily accessible to us, and the 

 occasional explorer into remoter parts has gathered the life records 

 in haphazard way, here a few pounds weight, there a few tons. Not 

 one-fiftieth part of the exposed rocks of the earth has yet been 

 closely scrutinized for these life records, and of the unexposed but 

 known strata, practically none at all in the great total. This State 

 of New York covers 47,000 square miles, two-thirds of which are 

 underlaid by life records of the earth. This fossiliferous area is 

 one eighteen -hundredth part of the land area of this globe, about 

 one eleven-hundredth part of the exposed fossiliferous rocks. In 

 this State the work -of assembling the evidences of the life record 

 has proceeded continuously in organized attack for eighty years. 

 An eminent French geologist has intimated that there are few places 

 of equal area in the world where the life record is so completely 

 assembled — and yet every year brings new and necessary additions 

 to our quiver. What shall we say of the other 1099 equal areas of 

 fossihferous rocks on the. earth? Many of them have indeed been 

 studied with precision but there remains and must remain for long 

 years yet an overwhelming balance of the unknown. In the abund- 

 ance and perfection of the life that is preserved in these rocks only 

 the living seas themselves are comparable. I have estimated the 

 number of individuals of a few of the species occurring in one in- 



