SHORTCOMINGS IN AMERICAN PALEONTOLOGY '>()^^ 



of thet^e paleontologists are mainly absorbed in geologic problems, and in 

 but one State is paleontology fostered in, an adequate way. This is in 

 the grand survey of New York State, organized in 1843 by James Hall, 

 first a paleontologist and secondarily a geologist, and now continued on 

 an even grander scale by John M. Clarke. It should be pointed out here, 

 moreover, that our State surveys are almost wholly dependent upon the 

 Tnited States Geological Survey, the New York State Survey, and the 

 university surveys of Maryland and Illinois for their chronogenetic evi- 

 dence. In this we see clearly that the gTcat majority of States are not 

 doing their duty toward American stratigraphy and historical geology. 

 Think of the State surveys of 25 to 50 years ago and of the good paleon- 

 tologic work done by them, nobly led by New York and more or less 

 heartily seconded by Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, 

 Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, and California. Where are they 

 today in paleontology? It is true that applied geology must first be 

 taken care of, so that the natural resources of our land can be rapidly 

 developed; but it is not at all necessary, nor is it a healthy viewpoint, 

 that the whole of the work of State surveys should be for practical or 

 mapping purposes. We know that there are more States than those men- 

 tioned which publish some paleontology, but it is almost wholly of the 

 nature of a restatement or adaptation of what has been known before. 

 We should add here that not only the State surveys, but the national 

 surveys as well, tend altogether too much to the practical. The grander 

 ideals of paleontology and geology are too much lost sight of in these 

 times of intense commercialism. 



The greatest shortcoming in American paleontology at present, how- 

 ever, is that our science is dominated by the geologists, and largely by 

 the geologists of the universities; for, after all, it is in these institutions 

 that most of the geologists and paleontologists of America are made, or 

 at least educated. This charge may be resented in certain quarters, and 

 therefore we will present the evidence upon which it is based. 



The United States Bureau of Education tells us that there are of 

 colleges and universities in this country not less than 450, and that 

 undergraduate geology is taught in about 288 of them and graduate 

 geology in 38. We learn, further, that geology in some form is taught 

 in every State in the Union, and that there are about 465 instructors in 

 the subject, of whom it appears certain that over 100 are not geologists, 

 but are in the small institutions where one man teaches all the natural 

 sciences. But, even if we should say that there are but 365 teachers of 

 geology, the fact remains that but 50 of these are paleontologists. The 

 geologists, in other words, dominate in the ratio of 7 to 1. There are 75 



