MEMOIR OF DANIEL W. LANGTON^ JR. 13 



As a student of the university he was always much interested in the 

 natural sciences, due in great part, no doubt, to his early training in the 

 nursery gardens of his father, for even as a child he was familiar with 

 the names and properties of most of the ornamental and useful plants. 

 Immediately after his graduation, in the summer of 1882, he became asso- 

 ciated with the present writer in geological work in the coastal plain of 

 Alabama, which association continued imtil he finally left the university 

 in 1889. At this time Ave were engaged in the study of the Tertiary and 

 Cretaceous formations of this section, and many months were spent by us 

 together in examining the banks of the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers, 

 our means of transportation being a skiff paddled by ourselves. After 

 we had established the succession of the strata along these rivers, he car- 

 ried on the work independently between the Alabama and the Chatta- 

 hoochee rivers, and on this latter river, in November, 1887, he made the 

 capital discovery of the marine Miocene formations exposed in the bluffs 

 from Chattahoochee Landing to Alum Bluff. To these formations he 

 gave the name Chattahoochee, but later students of this section have re- 

 stricted the name to the lower beds of the series. 



During this period, as his whole time was not given to the Geological 

 Survey, he spent some months in Mexico in the interests of a mining 

 company, and also in the Alabama coastal plain collecting for Mr. 

 Aldrich. 



At commencement of 1889 he received the appointment of assistant 

 chemist in the university, the present writer being at that time professor 

 of chemistry and geology. Before the opening of the next college year, 

 however, he received and accepted an offer from the Baltimore and Ohio 

 Eailroad to be consulting geologist of that road, so that he did not take 

 up his work in the university. 



He remained with the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad as their consulting 

 geologist for about two years, examining and reporting on mineral lands, 

 mainly coal and iron, for this company. In the course of these investiga- 

 tions he became interested in some coal lands in West Virginia, with the 

 result later of developing a property known as the Turkey Knob mine. 

 Of this enterprise he became the manager or superintendent. After a 

 somewhat protracted struggle the mine was compelled to shut down be- 

 cause it was impossible to get from the railroad the cars necessary to 

 handle the output. His experiences here fully convinced him of the fact 

 that a small operator could not get a ''fair deaF' under the then existing 

 conditions of railroad management. It is possible that the same condi- 

 tions obtain at the present day. 



