LETTER OF TRA:NSMITTAL. 



To His Excellency James A. Beaver, Oovernor of Pennsyl- 

 vania^ ex-oMco chairman of the Board of Commissioners of 

 the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania : 



Sir: I have the honor to report, for the approval of the Board, 

 this compilation of all the forms of animal and vegetable life 

 hitherto seen in the geological formations of our State; both 

 those collected by the assistant geologists of Professor H. D; 

 Rogers, fifty years ago, and those collected by my respected 

 colleagues since 1874. My task has been an arduous one, re- 

 quiring more time and patience than I anticipated, and exhib- 

 iting a wealth of the State in genera and species of extinct 

 plants and animals as great as its well-known wealth in min 

 erals. 



Although fossils have no money value in the exchanges of 

 the world, they have a value superior to money in enlighten- 

 ing the intellect of a people by unfoldiDg before their reverent 

 attention the course of the divine creation of thousands of kinds 

 of beings in the course of the many ages which preceded the 

 creation of man. 



We have in our State a nearly unbroken series of rock strata 

 from the oldest to the newest, a pile of sediments nearly eighty 

 thousand feet thick, one- half at least of which are filled with 

 casts of the dead bodies of things once alive and flourishing, 

 singly or in communities, now all extinct, leaving no descend- 

 ants among the trees and shrubs, the shells and bugs and 

 worms, the lizards, birds and beasts of present nature. 



Those who please to speculate on the evolution of life, may 

 amuse themselves with traces of resemblance, but they cannot 

 find a single proof, however slight, for the actual hereditary 

 descent of the living creatures of our age from those of preced- 

 ing ages. From the dawn of time onward to the present time, 

 each age has had its own special fauna and flora, its peculiar 



(V) 



