Hartt.] 358 [April 17, 



see results and to prepare myself and my assistants beforehand for 

 the probable work before us. Except for several years of preparatory 

 work in the United States, the consulting of the best libraries and 

 museums and the taking of advice of scientific men eminent in spec- 

 ialties likely to be of use in Brazil, and but for the fact that each 

 man came to his work furnished with abundant notes and books, it 

 would have been impossible to have done more than prepare mere 

 broad descriptions of the parts of the country explored, and anything 

 like the critical study of fossils, and the accurate determination of 

 formations would have been absolutely impossible. All this prelim- 

 inary work, so exceedingly important to the Geological Commission, 

 has cost nothing to government. Instead of being forced to send 

 collections to foreign scientific men for study, the Geological Com- 

 mission has been able, in its own laboratories and with its own re- 

 sources, to prepare for publication a very considerable part of its 

 results, though this work has naturally progressed much more slowly 

 than it would have done under superior advantages. My great de- 

 sire has been to lay a firm foundation for Brazilian geology in the 

 development of palseontological localities and the accurate determin- 

 ation of characteristic formations by means of fossils, and to this end 

 the Commission has labored with a degree of success surprising 

 even to myself, and we find ourselves to-day with an embarras de 

 richesses. The Commission as at present constituted comprises only 

 six persons, on whom has fallen all this work of collecting, arranging, 

 and studying this material, which in richness is to be compared 

 with that of the ' Thayer/ or ' Hassler,' or ' Challenger' expeditions; 

 and it is not reasonable to expect that, without free access to scien- 

 tific libraries, and to collections for comparison, the work of the Bra- 

 zilian Commission should go on more rapidly than that of the foreign 

 commissions where the material is divided up among dozens of spec- 

 ialists, and where the scientific man enjoys every advantage. As it 

 is, it will be several years before the full results of these commissions 

 are prepared for publication. For six persons to unpack, assort, pre- 

 pare, and describe the immense collections made by the Geological 

 Commission in less than one year, was an absolute impossibility, as 

 every scientific man will agree with me, and in the six months gener- 

 ously granted me after the suppression of the Commission by the 

 Camaras I had only the hope of saving as large a fragment as possi- 

 ble of our results. It is needless to say that it has been entirely out 

 of our power to. finish the work, notwithstanding that the members of 



