LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. IX 



Two classes of persons will value them most highly : the class 

 of quarymen and assistant railroad engineers who spend the 

 most of their time in breaking up the rocks and finding fossils; 

 and the class of school teachers who need objects for ths in 

 struction of the young. 



I have endeavored to furnish an example of what the people 

 of a State have a right to demand of geologists and palaeon- 

 tologists to help them to understand what is usually written 

 only for the learned. 



Descriptions of fossils without figures are of no use to the 

 unlearned. The Greek and Latin names given to fossils mean 

 nothing to tho.-:e who know only the English language. Costly 

 illustrated books scattered about in libraries, public and private, 

 are inaccessible to and unattainable by the people of a State. 

 Even those who reside in cities know not where to find them. 

 If by accident they now and then encounter one, they are not 

 trained to its use, and can only in a helpless, listless mood of 

 mind turn over pages written mostly in an unknown tongue, 

 and plates of figures arranged in no comprehensible order, a 

 confused jumble of unrelated objects, with no names attached 

 to them, and their descriptions only to be found, by reference 

 to an index, in some distant part of the book. 



Geologists complain that people at large take no interest in 

 fossils. Geologists have only themselves to blame for the fact, 

 for they furnish the people with no helps for understanding 

 fossils. — no primers or handbooks of primary instruction. 

 Names mean nothing without pictures; and a picture tells 

 nothing unless some explanation of it is subjoined. Even ex- 

 perts grow weary of the laborious references which they are 

 compelled to make from figures grouped on plates at the end 

 of a volume, to names anti descrijjtions printed, indexed and 

 tabled in different parts of the text. So inconvenient and 

 wasteful a fashion of publication could only be justified by its 

 cheapness ; but considering the great first cost of drawing and 

 printing the figures, the perfection of the art of photographic 

 electrotyping, and the saving of space by indenting the cuts, 

 there seems to be no excuse of this sort now for retaining the 

 old style ; and it is fatal to the only right service of such books, 

 their easy consultation. 



I have confidence that the Board will bear it in mind that 



