No. 384.] JAMES HALL AND AMERICAN GEOLOGY. QOI 
The consecutive arrangement of fossils from the various 
formations, their concentration in single volumes, the scale of 
illustration, all combined to give the publication a sort of 
encyclopedic character which, coupled with the promise of its 
continuous extension, made it a reference library of paleontol- 
ogy at that early day. It was continued, and as the finished 
and unexcelled drawings of Simpson and Whitfield, with the 
perfect lithography of Ast, gave it greater and greater luster, 
it grew upwards into the proudest monument perhaps ever 
erected to an American geologist. 
It is interesting to read these early volumes, the starting 
points of American paleontology, and note the comparisons 
and observations. The author, with his characteristic love of 
illuminating observation, notes the varying character of the 
same species in successive beds or differing localities, compares 
and elucidates species, dwells on identity or contrast with 
European species, points out eccentricities of structure or 
ornament. These early volumes have a temporary, almost a 
temporizing character, are provisional in statement and neces- 
sarily imperfect in execution. The prolixity, evolution, and cir- 
cumlocution of Barrande’s work, published almost at the same 
time, contrasts almost amusingly with Hall’s adequate but by 
comparison meager treatment, and of course Barrande’s figures 
are incomparable, if a trifle mechanical and stiff. But Hall 
explains his own great difficulties — his small library, his dis- 
tance from scientific friends, without authentic collections for 
comparison, in a new field, and with poor facilities for illus- 
tration. These impediments passed away. It is a part of 
that history of the development of paleontological science to 
note that at Albany was created a center of attraction and 
radiation, and two men became enlisted in this work whose 
special powers entered as determinative forces in its improve- 
ment — Whitfield and Meek. Later a higher stage even of 
erudition was reached, and Clarke and Beecher completed the 
assumption of the advanced biological expression. 
What a development of scientific work in his own chosen 
field Professor James Hall has seen! State surveys and the 
marvelous rise of the government surveys started up around 
