MEMOIR OF CLARENCE EDWARD DUTTON 11 



He was appointed adjutant of the Twenty-first Connecticut Volun- 

 teers in September, 1862, and the following year, March 1, promoted to 

 captaincy. In 1864 he was transferred to the Ordnance Corps of the 

 Eegular Army, and served through the remainder of the war., While 

 assigned to the Watervliet Arsenal in 1865 he began his scientific studies, 

 which, as he informed me, took two directions, and both were pursued 

 with ardor. The first was invertebrate paleontology, under the guidance 

 of Hall and Whitfield. The second was the study of steel, in cooperation 

 with Alexander L. Holley, of the Bessemer Steel Works, of Troy. 



At the end of five years he was transferred to Frankford Arsenal, 

 Philadelphia, and thence to Washington, D. C. Being cut off from im- 

 mediate contact with steel, his thoughts concentrated on geology, espe- 

 cially on the physical side of the subject. He became a member of the 

 Philosophical Society of Washington in 1872, and met Professor Henry 

 and Professor Baird, who took great interest in him. Through the 

 former and Major Powell he was induced to consent to a detail for duty 

 with the Powell Survey, beginning May 15, 1875. 



He devoted ten years to the study of the great plateau region of the 

 West, and published his results in the three reports entitled "The Geology 

 of the High Plateaus of Utah" (6), 1 "The Tertiary History of the Grand 

 Canyon District" (7), and "Mount Taylor and the Zimi Plateau" (16). 

 The plateau region of the West is remarkable, not only for the simplicity 

 of its geological phenomena, but also for the variety and the enormous 

 scale of the exposures. 



Dutton's general conclusions are summarized in the closing chapter of 

 the report on Mount Taylor and the Zuiii Plateau. Although contrib- 

 uting much to the geological history of the region, he evidently dwells 

 with greater pleasure on the physical problems, and remarks, in describ- 

 ing the facts, that "not a trace of systematic plication has yet been found 

 there," referring especially to the Zuni part of the plateau region. 



"The terms anticlinal and synclinal have almost dropped on! of the vocabu- 

 lary of the western geologist. The strata arc often flexed, but (he type of 

 flexure is the monocline. 



"The country at large shows no traces of a widespread, universal horizontal 

 compression; on the contrary, it discloses the absence of such stress. Wo 

 seem here to get nearer to the real nature of the process which has built the 

 mountains. Shorn of that extreme complexity which confuses and bewilders 

 us in more highly developed structures, the great central facts nnd the true 

 essence of the mechanical processes involved become much clearer. The moun- 

 tains of the West have not been produced by horizontal compression, but by 

 the action of some unknown forces beneath, which have pushed them np." 



x The numbers in ( ) refer t<> lis! at end of this article. 



