294 SOME OF PROFESSOR MARSH’S CRITICISMS. 
Another critic not so courageous as Prof. Marsh, since he is 
anonymous, has attacked (Am. Jour. Sci. Arts, 1872, 489) my 
statement of determination of the Cretaceous age of ‘the Bitter 
reek .coal, citing five authorities as having previously made the 
same determination. I have shown (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 
Jan. 14, 1873) that but one of these references relates to the region 
in question, and that the critic was ignorant of the geography or 
literature of the subject, or both. He, however, repeats (loc. cit., 
1873, 231) that Mr. Meek “ referred Dr. Hayden’s collection from 
Bitter Creek at Point of Rocks to the Cretaceous,” a fact I had 
previously pointed out, and adds that I am in error in asserting 
that Mr. Meek attached interrogation marks to all his Coalville 
determinations (200 miles west), as he cites two Cardia and two 
Inocerami as from Coalville and without the question. More 
careful examination would have shown my critic that the two 
. Cardia and one Inoceramus are stated to be from localities remote 
from both Coalville and Bitter Creek. 
But there is no indication in my original note of a design to 
ignore the useful labors of the gentlemen who have written on this 
subject; nothing was farther from my intentions, in so issuing an 
early notice of my own observations, than to ignore the opinions 
of Mr. Meck, with which I have become pretty well acquainted 
through pleasant association on the same geological survey. Had 
they been coincident with my own, I should have mentioned them, 
although unpublished. Mr. Meek will, however, soon speak for 
_ himself. It requires but a casual examination to show that the 
criticism is captious and uncalled for, and that its author is ‘only 
Kog aid to the champion above considered. 
IL. 
I now turn to another subject, the raising of which is due also 
to Prof. Marsh. He has very commendably made himself ac- 
quainted with the literature of the authors who had previously 
written on these extinct Proboscidia, though notin time to prevent 
his redescribing some of the genera and species. But unfortu- 
_ well that my descriptions antedate his by a month and more, and 
that he is posterior to Dr. Leidy, by two months at least. He 
is however not strong enough to state the nomenclature accord- 
gly, but endeavors to prove something else. In order to do 
-nately he does not tell us all that he knows. He knows perfectly - 
