REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I913 41 



and that all the Taylor books and papers were lost with the excep- 

 tion of this, which finally came into his possession. 



The book is a noteworthy record. Mr Taylor was an accom- 

 plished geologist and a fine field observer, as well as a sketch artist 

 of no mean ability. The pages of the book are filled with carefully 

 detailed geological sketches in water color, many of them of outcrops 

 and of localities in this State which are no longer accessible. Mr 

 Taylor had come to New York evidently for the purpose of putting 

 himself in touch with the recently acquired results by the New 

 York State geologists, and seems to have been particularly intimate 

 with Mr Vanuxem, of the Third District. Evidently he was re- 

 ceived with courtesy by his colleagues here and given this notebook, 

 which bears the official stamp of the organization; but his field 

 trips were made independently of the official geologists themselves 

 and he traversed the State from the southwest corner to its eastern 

 boundary and beyond. Some of Mr Taylor's sketches are of so 

 great interest as to be worth bringing back to the public eye and 

 to the public record of the New York Geological Survey, into 

 which they have entered only in one or two instances; for it is to 

 be noticed that Mr Vanuxem made references to Mr Taylor's 

 Pennsylvania work in his annual report for 1837 an< ^ used several 

 of his drawings in the Final Report on the Third District, of which 

 may be mentioned the sketches of the cliffs on Cayuga lake and of 

 the inclined strata in Howland's quarry near Union Springs. But 

 Mr. Taylor's connection with the organization has never before been 

 a matter of record and it may be well to give here the following 

 brief sketch of his career. 



He was born in England in 1789 and came to America in 1831. 

 In his own country he had been a mining engineer and practical 

 geologist, a member of the Geological Society of London and other 

 learned institutions of Great Britain. His practice of geology was 

 entirely economic, and in the development of the coal and iron 

 industry, particularly of Wales, he gained for himself noteworthy 

 distinction. 



Upon his arrival in America he took up his residence in Phila- 

 delphia and shortly after was engaged in a survey of the coal fields 

 of Tioga county, Pennsylvania, and subsequently in the southern 

 coal fields in Dauphin county. Of so high order were these under- 

 takings that he was frequently under professional engagement in 

 other mineral districts of the United States. His great work, 

 however, and that upon which his repute as a geologist rests, is 



