6 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



in New York. My predecessor, Prof. James Hall, at various times during 

 his long official career of sixty-three years, sought, found and portrayed in 

 his reports the faunas of these formations in their extent to the west and 

 south. He established his purpose to demonstrate that the New York 

 series as erected by the original survey of the State, 1836-43, extended 

 beyond the limits of the State, The work of others, official geologists of 

 individual states and independent private investigators, has confirmed and 

 supplemented this work through those regions. Eastward and to the north, 

 over country where the rocks are largely crystalline and in vast areas of 

 unchanged sediments, much less has been acquired. Here again we recog- 

 nize the labors of geologists, but for the most part the region is so 

 extensive and the efTorts made so desultory and discontinuous that in effect 

 much of it remains a virgin field to the -student of its past. 



The problems of today in this study of New York are not wholly those 

 of a generation ago. We are seeking light on the broader questions of 

 changes in continental coast lines, in the upbuilding of the country, of the 

 tidal flow of the ancient seas, their currents and depth, on the origin and the 

 direction of migration of their faunas and the evolutionary changes of their 

 constituent organisms. In the prosecution of these themes we can safely pro- 

 ceed only by the method of closely analyzing the character and affiliations of 

 the fossil remains. Such knowledge is of fundamental im.portance. Without 

 it in its fulness conclusions can be but hasty and tentative, resulting in assump- 

 tions and hypotheses. To acquire it costs vast labor, to interpret it caution 

 and keen appreciation. To neglect it, to pluck here and there a salient charac- 

 ter and with these plunge into the depths of inference, or to approach it with 

 too narrow an equipment, is to rear a structure which will stand but for a day. 



We do well to follow in this procedure the standards which our 

 fathers have set up and which the common experience in the science 

 concedes to be imperative. It is too soon to lay down the hammer and 

 construct in the study a philosophy of the earth. Vast as has been the 

 acquisition of geologic facts, " hammers and chisels and a' " must still be 

 the watchword of future orenerations of students in this science. 



