MEMORIAL OF E. W. HILGARD 43 



clients^ on a Mexican silver mine, all his estimates of values were based 

 on quantitative blow-pipe assays. 



His first scientific work in the Mississippi embayment region began in 

 1855, when he accepted the position on the Geological Survey of Missis- 

 sippi, ^^amid the sincere condolence of his scientific friends on his assign- 

 ment to so uninteresting a field, where the Paleozoic formations (then 

 occupying almost exclusively the minds of American geologists) were 

 unrepresented." On his way soutli he paid a visit of several days to Dr. 

 David Dale Owen and his assistants, E. T. Cox and S. S. Lyon. This 

 visit was most important and fruitful in giving direction to his subse- 

 quent studies and methods. 



The notes of the first two years of Hilgard's Mississippi work were 

 incorporated in the report of L. Harper, State Geologist, published in 

 1857, but with such misrepresentations and distortions that Hilgard made 

 public denial of all responsibility therefor. The report of 1860, on the 

 geology and agriculture of Mississippi, is thus the first authentic state- 

 ment of the results of his personal field, office, and laboratory work during 

 four years, 1855 to 1859. 



After a j^ear^s experience as assistant on the Geological Survey of Mis- 

 sissippi, he writes :^ 



"It having become clearly apparent to me by this time (1856) that the 

 Survey would never maintain itself in public esteem on the basis of mineral 

 discoveries, and that it must seek its main support in what services it might 

 render to agriculture, I made a point of paying close attention to and record- 

 ing the surface features, vegetation, soils, the quality and supply of water, and 

 especially the marls, which I found to occur in large supply and great variety. 

 I also made a collection of plants, which, although omitted from the subjects 

 mentioned in the act creating the Survey, I perceived was essential toward the 

 characterization of soils. In the prosecution of these studies the close con- 

 nection between the surface vegetation and the underlying formations became 

 so striking that I soon largely availed myself of the former in tracing out the 

 limits of adjacent formations, in searching for outcrops, etcetera." 



In our studies of the coastal plain of Alabama the present writer and 

 his assistant, Daniel W. Langdon, have time and again found that the 

 method of geologizing above mentioned, by the native vegetation, is by 

 no means to be neglected or held in slight esteem. 



Hilgard continues : 



"In this report (1860) I undertook to separate, as far as possible, the purely 

 scientific part from that bearing directly on practical points, in order to render 

 the latter as accessible to unscientific readers as the nature of the case per- 



Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol, iii, pp. 207-234. 



