524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
of James Hall, the State geologist of the great Empire State; and 
later while completing the paper on the Cretaceous fossils he studied 
at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, where he was so fortunate 
as to be able to attend a course of lectures by the elder Agassiz, then 
in the last year of his life. 
Cambridge proved a congenial environment, and so instead of re- 
turning to Cornell, he continued at the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology from 1873 till 1875, acting also as assistant in zoology at the 
Boston Society of Natural History. During the summer months of 
those years he served as volunteer scientific assistant under Spencer 
F. Baird in the marine explorations of the United States Fish Com- 
mission on the New England coast, and thus began his connection 
with the Smithsonian Institution, for at that time the scientific work 
of the Fish Commission was practically under the direction of the 
Smithsonian. 
In the autumn of 1875 he received the appointment of geologist to 
the Geological Commission of Brazil with orders to report to Profes- 
sor Hartt in Rio de Janeiro, and with that service he continued until 
March, 1878. His first field work was in the region about the Bay 
of Bahia, and continued thence down the coast of the province of the 
same name to near its southern end. Extensive deposits of coal said 
to occur in parts of that region constituted one of the special objects 
of the exploration, but the geology was studied in every particular, 
including the extensive coral reefs that lie along the coast, and also 
the ethnology of the Indian tribes living inland. The report on the 
geology and coral reefs was published in the Archives of the National 
Museum of Rio de Janeiro in 1878.* 
Later he explored the central and southern parts of the province 
of Sao Paulo for the purpose of determining the mineral, and es- 
pecially the coal, resources, and while these proved to be unimportant, 
he had the opportunity of studying the origin of the rich red lands 
where the famous coffee of that region is grown. 
On returning to the United States, Mr. Rathbun brought with him 
complete series of the Devonian and Cretaceous fossils which have 
since become the property of the United States National Museum. It 
had been his hope to have monographed this interesting material, 
but other duties claimed his attention and with the exception of a few 
papers such as "A List of the Brazilian Echinoderms, with Notes 
on Their Distribution," which he contributed to the Transactions of 
the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1879,^ the ma- 
terial was worked up by other scientists. 
Meanwhile he had accepted from Secretary Baird the appointment 
of scientific assistant in the United States Fish Commission with 
* Vol. 3, pp. 159-183. » Vol. 5, pp. 139-158. 
