PREFACE. vn 



Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and New Hampshire, and the Prov- 

 inces of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. 

 These surveys have greatly extended our knowledge of American rocks 

 and mineral products, besides affording aid toward a deeper insight into 

 principles, and a clearer comprehension of the system that pervades 

 the earth's structure. Besides all this, large contributions to paleon- 

 tology have been made by some of the Reports, and most prominently 

 by the new volume of the New York series, by James Hall ; the 

 volumes of the Illinois Survey, by Meek, Worthen, Newberry, 

 and Lesquereux ; of the Ohio Survey, by Newberry and Meek ; 

 of the California Survey, under J. D. Whitney, by Meek and Gabb ; 

 of the Survey of the Territories, under F. V. Hayden, by Meek, 

 Cope, Letdy, and Lesquereux ; and of Canada, under Sir War. E. 

 Logan, by Billings, Dawson, and Hall. Various important me- 

 moirs also have appeared in the scientific journals and in the publica- 

 tions of scientific societies and academies, and some have been issued 

 as independent works. 



Since the year 1862, through Scudder, we have our first knowl- 

 edge of the Insect-life of the Devonian ; through Leldy, Cope, and 

 Marsh, we have seen the meagre list of American Cretaceous Rep- 

 tiles enlarged, until it exceeds that from all the world besides ; and 

 through the same geologists, not only has the Mammalian fauna of 

 the American Miocene received additions of many species, but the 

 stranger fauna of the Rocky Mountain Eocene has been first made 

 known ; through Marsh, also, the first American Cretaceous Birds 

 have been named, and the announcement has come of a Bird with 

 teeth in sockets, like some of the higher Reptiles. In addition, the 

 labors, among Invertebrates, of Hall, Meek, Billings, and others ; 

 among Fishes, of Newberry ; among fossil Plants, of Lesquereux 

 and Dawson, have greatly advanced these departments of American 

 paleontology. 



The discoveries abroad, also, have been many and important, though 

 of less marked character than the American, because the accessible 

 field had already been well explored. Large additions have been 

 made to the history of prehistoric Man ; and the frontispiece of this 

 volume, — engraved, by Mr. John Karst of New York, from the pho- 

 tograph accompanying the memoir of E. Riviere, — representing a 

 skeleton of an inhabitant of Southern Europe in the Stone age, just 

 as it lay after being uncovered from the stalagmite of a cavern, exem- 

 plifies one of the classes of facts which have been elucidated. Besides, 

 much new light has been thrown on the successional relations of spe- 

 cies, and also on the right methods of interpreting geological records. 



