SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 383 



matter. I could not help seeing, moreover, on the same page with these 

 paragraphs and on the preceding page, the evidence that he had profited 

 by the information I had given him, v^hile comparing these fossils in my 

 museum, in March 1865. to save himself from what would have been a 

 mortifying error in his description of Acidaspis ida. 



Prof. W. says : " We had been aware, early in December 1864, that 

 " Prof. Hall was at work upon fossils from the Niagara group of Wis- 

 " consin; and one of us informed him that we had just completed a moTiO' 

 ^^ graph of the fossils of Bridgeport, a work lohich had been in progress 

 '•'■about two years^ Thus leaving it to be inferred that early in December 

 1864, I had been apprised of the intention of Profs. Winchell and 

 Marcy. This, however, is quite contrary to the fact, and I presume is an 

 oversight of the writer. On the 27th Dec. 1864, I wrote to Prof. Win- 

 chell, sending him at the same time the first sixteen pages of my paper 

 on Niagara fossils, and asking him, at the close of my letter, if he had in 

 his collections "any of the Cystidece or Crinoidea oi the Racine, etc., 

 = Niagara of Wisconsin; " as I was intending to close my work for the 

 State Geol. Survey, which had for some time been suspended. 



Under date of Dec. 31st, 1864, Prof. Winchell replied to my letter 

 of the 27th, and thus refers to the point of inquiry : " It is a queer coinci- 

 " dence that you allude to the Racine, etc., limestone, at the same time 

 *' that I have been investigating a collection from that horizon at Chicago, 

 " More than a year ago, I received some specimens of unique interest, and 

 " Prof. Marcy and I have scoured the Niagara limestone of that locality, 

 " and drawn up a paper to be published by the Boston Society," etc. 



Prof. W. then enumerates some of the Cystidece and Cri7ioidea discovered 

 by himself and Prof. Marcy, and remarks : "Of course you will not take 

 "any advantage of my unreserve in making known a portion of the con- 

 " tents of our paper." 



In replying to this letter, I merely stated that I should have no oppor- 

 tunity of taking advantage of its contents till published, as the printing 

 of my own paper would be "suspended in the middle." It was not there- 

 fore till early in January 1865, at which time all the matter published by 

 me was in the hands of the printer, that I received notice of these investi- 

 gations upon the Niagara fossils of Bridgeport ; and Prof. W. does not 

 call it a Monograph, on which he had been engaged, and " which had been 

 " in progress for about two years ;^^ nor does the prefatory notice indicate 

 a longer period than his letter. Had the notice to me been actually given 

 in the early part of December, I might perhaps have modified my publica- 

 tion, so as to have avoided any interference. I had, however, begun the 

 printing of this paper in November, and it was suspended in January, 

 quite as much with the hope of avoiding any interference with Profs. 

 Winchell and ^Marcy as from any other cause. I had been mainly 

 desirous of getting before the public some notice of the peculiar cystidians 

 and crinoidians of this western locality of the Niagara group, and the facts 



