1878. ] ; Scientific News. 267 
very extensive and instructive collection; but these are at Wash- 
ington, and my pressing duties here and at Kew prevented my 
visiting the federal Capital. 
e most important scientific results hitherto derived from the 
labors of Dr. Hayden and his parties are unquestionably the geo- 
logical; such as the delineation of the boundaries of the Creta- 
ceous and Tertiary seas and lakes that occupied more than one 
basin of the mountain of Central North America, and the mar- 
velous accumulation of fossil vertebrates that these ancient shores 
have yielded. Over an area of many hundred thousand square 
miles in North America there have been found, within the last 
very few years, beds of great extent and thickness, of all ages, 
from the Trias onwards, containing the well-preserved remains of 
so great a multitude of flying, creeping and walking things, ref- 
erable to so many orders of plants and animals, and often of such 
gigantic proportions that the palzontologists of the states, with 
museums vastly larger than our own, are at a loss for space to 
exhibit them. So common indeed are some species, and so beau- 
tifully preserved, that I saw numbers of them, especially insects, 
plants and fishes, exposed for sale and eagerly purchased by 
travelers with confectionery and fruit, at the stalls of the railway 
station, from the eastern base of the Rocky mountains all the 
way to California. 
An examination of some of these fossils has brought to light 
the important fact that in North America there is no recognized 
break between the Tertiary and Cretaceous beds. This is due to 
the interpolation of a vast lignitic series, the fossils of which fur- 
nish conflicting evidence. Concerning this series Dr. Hayden, 
who has traced it over many hundred miles, observes (Report of 
Geological Survey, 1874, p. 20), that the character of its palaon- 
tological as well as of its strictly geological results is such that 
whether the,entire group be placed in the Lower Tertiary or 
Upper Cretaceous is unimportant, and that the testimony of the 
palzontologists willrobably always be as conflicting as at present. 
I must not end my notices of some of the labors of our 
scientific brethren in the United States without expressing 
my admiration of the spirit and the manner in which the Gov- 
ernment and people have cooperated in making known the : 
physical and biological features of their country, and my con- 
viction that the results they have given to the world are, whether 
or magnitude or importance, greater of their kind than have 
been accomplishéd within the same time by any people or gov- 
ernment in the older continents. How great would now be our 
knowledge of the climate and natural features of India and of our 
_ colonies*had the excellent tsigonometrigal survey of the one and | 
_ the territorial and geological surveys of the others been supple- 
mented by reports such as those to which I have directed _ oe 
attention ! noe 
VOL. X11.—No IV. 19 
