440 Anniversary Meeting. [Nov. 30, 



of the Secretary o£ State for the Interior. In 1869 and 1870 opera- 

 tions were carried on in Colorado and New Mexico ; and full reports 

 on the meteorology, agriculture, zoology, and palaeontology of these 

 regions, of great interest and importance, were drawn up and subse- 

 quently published. In 1871 the detailed survey of this Yellowstone 

 district was begun, and those marvellous natural features were carefully 

 studied, which have excited the liveliest interest in Europe, and have 

 induced Congress, on Dr. Hayden's representations, to appropriate the 

 whole area as a Government reserve, thus securing to naturalists free 

 access to natural phenomena which in other places, both in Europe and 

 America, are too often monopolized by speculators and closed to the 

 public. 



In 1872 the Survey was further extended, and was organized into two 

 corps, each provided with a topographer, geologist, mineralogist, meteoro- 

 logist, and naturalist, and the States of Idaho and Montana were embraced 

 in its operations ; in 1873 it was pushed into Colorado, thence into Utah, 

 and on its completion in 1876, an area of not less than 70,000 square 

 miles, much of it exceedingly mountainous, had been included in the Survey. 



The literature of the Survey consisted, in 1876, of 41 volumes, classi- 

 fied as follows : — 1, annual reports, with maps and sections ; 2, bulletins 

 for giving speedy publicity to new facts ; 3, miscellaneous publications, 

 comprising tables of elevations, catalogues of plants and animals, and 

 meteorological data ; 4, monographs on various branches of natural 

 history, especially palaeontology, copiously illustrated with admirable 

 plates in quarto, among which are the works of Leidy, Lesquereux, 

 Coues, C. Thomas, Cope, Parry, Meek, Packard, Silliman, Hayden 

 himself, and others, all of whom are well known on this side of the 

 Atlantic ; lastly, the number of photographs now exceeds 4000, and 

 includes, besides geological and geographical features of great interest, 

 views of ancient architectural remains, and of 1200 Indians, belonging 

 to 74 tribes. 



In giving these particulars I speak from some personal knowledge. 

 I wish that the same could be said of the local habitation of the Survey 

 and its museum, which, I am assured, contains a very extensive and 

 instructive collection ; but these are at Washington, and my pressing 

 duties here and at Kew prevented my visiting the federal capital. 



The most important scientific results hitherto derived from the labours 

 of Dr. Hayden and his parties are unquestionably the geological : such 

 as the delineation of the boundaries of the Cretaceous and Tertiary seas 

 and lakes that occupied more than one basin of the mountains of Central 

 N. America, and the marvellous 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 on- 

 wards, containing the well-preserved remains of so great a multitude of 



