70 Scientific News. [ January, 
not only interrupted, but stopped, through the unwise action of a 
handful, not of politicians, but scientists. The result has proved, 
we fear, that it would have been better to have let well enough 
alone, for during the past season little or no geological explora- 
tion has been carried on in the Western Territories; small parties 
were sent to Leadville and the Eureka mines and the Comstock 
lodes and the California gold fields, no general geological 
work having, apparently, been done at all! The people want and 
are expending money for more information about the unsurveyed 
lands of the Far West; the scientific world demand and should 
have widely extended and thorough topographical, geological and 
biological surveys of that vast region, such as have been inaugu- 
rated and carried on in the past; these, as we have always felt 
should be directed by one mind, and for this reason some mem- 
bers of the National Academy voted for the consolidation of the 
different surveys then in the field. For a United States Survey 
of fhe Public Lands to expend a large or moderate proportion of 
its money and means in one or several of the Eastern States, such 
as Tennessee, or one of the New England States, is absurd and 
uncalled for, and interferes with the work that may be going on 
or is in prospect in such State. American scientists hope and 
expect that geological explorations under the new regime will, - 
hereafter at least, not be inferior in breadth of treatment, scientific . 
accuracy and extent, to what it has been in the past; ‘certainly 
that the zeal and previous success in field and general geological 
. work of the Geologist of the Fortieth Parallel may not be lessened, | 
but fulfill the expectations of the American people and scientific 
public.—£attors Naturalist. 
— Prof. B. F. Mudge, formerly Mayor of Lynn, Mass., died in 
Kansas on Friday last. Mr. Mudge was born at Orringford, Me., 
August 11, 1817; his parents removed to Lynn when he was about 
a year old. He attended the common schools until he was 14 
years old, when he went to work at shoemaking, at which he 
worked six years. Then fitting for college he entered Wesleyan 
University, where he graduated in 1840, subsequently taking up 
the study of law. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and prac- 
ticed his profession at Lynn until 1859. He was elected the sec- 
ond mayor of Lynn, serving in 1852 and 1853. He went West 
and became chemist for the Breckinridge Oil and Iron Company 
of Kentucky. When the war broke out he went to Kansas, and 
in 1863 was appointed State Geologist. In 1865 he was elected 
Professor of Geology and Associated Sciences at the State Agri- 
cultural College, and remained in that position for eight years. 
Since 1874 Mr. Mudge has been employed in exploring the geo- _ 
logical formations of Western Kansas, He was also employed 
by Dr. Hayden in describing the tertiary and cretaceous formations _ 
~ in Kansas, and he made extensive collections for Prof, E. D. Cope, 
in that State, during which he discovered the first specimens of 
