24 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE PITTSBURGH MEETING 



rounded with young men — Fielding B. Meek, Charles A. White, and 

 William M. Gabb — all to become distinguished in their work elsewhere, 

 but no one of whom was permitted to look for honors in the official work 

 of his chief. Mr. Whitfield's experience in drawing had been that of a 

 mechanical draftsman, and the first of his work was the explication of 

 the calyx plates in the Iowa crinoids by diagrams, which were so very 

 successful and illuminating that he was soon to have opportunity to 

 carry this work further, for it was about this time that C. A. White dis- 

 covered in the Hamilton shales near the village of Muttonville the most 

 remarkable colony of crinoids the State of New York has ever produced, 

 and it became imperative to describe them at once, for Billings was just 

 over the fence in Canada, and the paramount law in those belligerent 

 times was priority. So here again Whitfield displayed his exceptional 

 skill in the demonstration of these structures with a success not before 

 attained. Mr. Whitfield was the independent author of only one scientific 

 paper in the reports of the State Museum during his twenty years in 

 Albany — a brief one on the structure of the brachidium of a brachio- 

 pod — ^but he was admitted into partnership with Hall in several papers 

 on the fossils of Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois, on which it is pretty safe to 

 say he did most of the work. The thousands of drawings which Mr. 

 Whitfield prepared for the Paleontology of New York were perfected by 

 an appreciation of the morphology of the structures under study and a 

 sharp eye for details. Hence many of these drawings were the most 

 exact as well as the most highly finished illustrations of paleozoic fossils 

 that had ever been published and were a noteworthy embellishment of 

 the science. He nearly lost his eyesight over his drawings of the grapto- 

 lites, which were made for Hall's momentous treatise on these organisms 

 for the Canadian survey, but Mr. Euedemann assures me that these were 

 so remarkable in accuracy, both of detail and general structure, as to 

 give an entirely new conception of these creatures and their mode of 

 growth. These Albany years of Whitfield's life were strenuous times for 

 invertebrate paleontology in New York. Their fire entered into the life 

 of all that shared in them, and though they have gone never to return 

 they have carried their impression well into the present. 



In 1872 Mr. Whitfield began to give instruction in geology at the 

 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, where for time out of mind 

 James Hall had been professor of that science. He continued his con- 

 nection with that institution till his removal to New York. It was this 

 service that gave him the title of Professor, which he always thereafter 

 rightfully cherished. When Dr. A. S. Bickmore was organizing the 

 American Museum of Natural History he succeeded in effecting as the 



