258 



ready to deny them under oath. Many instances of fraud 

 however were detected, making it highly probable that 

 many more transactious w r ere fraudulent. The scalps of 

 dogs had been allowed as wolves. The same scalps had 

 been used many times to draw bounties. Many of the 

 claims for bounties had been sold beforehand to supervisors, 

 who thus audited their own accounts. The whole series of 

 frauds was one of the most startling character, showing 

 how far a community, peaceable and inoffensive, and reason- 

 ably honest, would under the influence of strong temptation 

 swerve from the strict line of morality. 



At the close of Dr. Hough's paper, Gen. Gansevoort, who 

 had been one of the commission, corroborated the state- 

 ments of the paper. He said that when the commission 

 reached Franklin county, they found county certificates 

 passing as money. After making an extended examination 

 they reported to the legislature, and their labor is known 

 to have saved to the state the sum of §35,000, which they 

 reported as false claims upon the government. 



Prof. Hall called for the reading of the proceedings of 

 the Institute for March 2, 1858. At that meeting he had 

 presented a paper in behalf of Messrs. Meek and Hayden, in 

 regard to the Permian fossils of Nebraska, and had made 

 some remarks of his own. Prof. Hall also read a passage 

 from his Iowa report now just published. He said he had 

 been accused of putting forward, in this passage, a claim of 

 priority for himself in this discovery of Permian fossils in 

 America, a claim which he never made. 



He asked as due to himself as a scientific man, and as due 

 to his relations with the other members of this society, that 

 a committee be appointed to investigate this subject; and 

 that they be requested to determine whether the pages in 

 the Iowa report, in which the system is introduced, or the 

 manner in which it is there treated, is such as to be re- 

 garded as claiming a priority for Prof. Hall in the discovery 

 ©redetermination of Permian fossils in America, the date of 



