22 Report of the State Geologist. 



Geological Survey, and concluding as follows : " The Board 

 would also suggest to the Governor, as matters which will soon 

 reqiiire attention, the mode and manner in which the final reports 

 are to be published, and the number and style of maps, geological 

 sections and diagrams.""^ 



At a later period it was decided that the entire work should 

 be published in quarto form. 



The order of the several departments, as set forth in the first 

 published volume of the ^ atural History, was as follows : Gen- 

 eral Introduction, by William H. Seward ; Part I, Zoology, by 

 James E. De Kay ; t art II, Botany, by John Torrey ; Part III, 

 Mineralogy, by Lewis C. Beck ; Parts lY and Yf , Geology and 

 Palaeontology, by William W. Mather, Ebenezer Emmons, Lard- 

 ner Yanuxem and James Hall. 



Agriculture was not prominent in the original plan of the sur- 

 vey, and representations coming from the State Agricultural 

 Society, in 1842, led Governor Seward to recognize its import- 

 ance in this relation. He decided that Agriculture and Palaeon- 

 tology should be considered as departments to be continued and 

 completed as a part of the Natural History of the State of l^ew 

 York. 



The Department of Agriculture was placed in charge of Dr. 

 Ebenezer Emmons, who retained his position as State Geologist, 

 and was also the custodian of the entire collections of the 

 Geological Survey, which constituted the State Cabinet of Natu- 

 ral History ; to the latter position he had been appointed by 

 Governor Seward. 



Mr. Timothy A. Conrad, who occupied the position of Palaeon- 

 tologist to the Geological Survey from 1837 to 1842, had pub- 

 lished only such preliminary annual reports as were required of 

 each department. At the latter date (181:-^) so little progress 

 had been made in the work that only a small portion of the 

 characteristic fossils had been named or described The geolo- 

 gists, therefore, found it necessary to give names to most of the 

 fossils used in illustrating their reports, these species being the 

 more common and characteristic forms of each group of the New 

 York geological series. 



* Assembly Document 50, January, 1840. 



+ After 1842 the Department of Geology was designated as Part IV, Agriculture as Part V, and 

 Palaeontology as Part VI. 



