444 Biographical Memoir of William C. Redjield. 



but whicji the progress of the science has since fully explained. 

 In the meetings of the American Association he was an attentive 

 listener to the geological papers, and frequently took part in the 

 discussions which they called forth, exhibiting a thorough acquain- 

 tance with the subjects under consideration. The phenomena of 

 the drift period, as evincive of glacial action in various forms 

 had deeply interested him ; and he had collected, and closely stu- 

 died, the shells of recent species which, in the vicinity of New 

 York are found beneath the deposit? of drift. His published 

 geological papers, however, relate chiefly to the sandstones of 

 Connecticut and New Jersey, particularly to their fossils, their 

 lipple-marks, and their rain-drops. His residence in early life 

 was within sight of the extensive quarries of this kind of sand- 

 stone, at Portland, Connecticut, and his frequent visits afterwards 

 to that region, afforded him opportunity for close observation. In 

 December, 1836, his son Mr. John H. Redfield, who inherits 

 much of the scientific taste of his father, describedf some of the 

 fossil fishes from this locality, and shewed that their structural af- 

 finities indicated for the so called " New Red Sandstone" a higher 

 position than had previously been assigned to it. Redfield pur- 

 sued the track thus opened by his son, and published, in the Ame- 

 rican Journal of Science, descriptions of several new species of 

 Ichthyolites. The last paper which he read before the American 

 Association was upon the Geological Age of the Sandstones of 

 Connecticut and New Jersey, and the contemporaneous depo- 

 sits in Virginia and North Carolina, He proposed for them 

 the denomination of the Newarh Gro'up^ and showed that the 

 Ichthyolites contained in them pointed unerringly to the Jurassic 

 period. In the course of these investigations he had given close 

 study to the subject of Fossil Fishes, and had formed a 

 collection of them, probably unequalled in this country, with spe- 

 cial reference to a contemplated monograph of the Ichthyolites of 

 the Newark Group. 



In 1839, Yale College conferred on Mr. Redfield the honorary 

 degree of Master of Arts, and the enlarged sphere in which his 

 labors for the promotion of science and the good of his fellow 

 men, were known and appreciated, was evinced by his election 

 into many learned societies in his own and foreign countries. 



Three distinguishing marks of the true philosopher met in Wil- 

 liam C. Redfield — originality to devise new things ; patience to 

 t Annals Ljc. Nat. History, New York, vol. iv. 



