200 
[Assembly 
The science of Palaeontology is, therefore, not only ardently pursued 
in Europe by the highest order of minds, but their labors are deemed 
worthy to be encouraged by the proceeds of certain funds for the ad- 
vancement of scientific knowledge, but the legislature of New- York 
alone has had the liberality to cause the organic remains of the various 
formations to be figured and described in the final report of the geolo- 
gists. The plan contemplated in describing them, is that of a strata- 
graphical arrangement, or grouping of all the organic remains a particu- 
lar series of strata referrible to one geological epoch ; and that a stu- 
dent may with the book before him in the field identify at once the 
rocks he desires to investigate. And so admirably distinct are the 
grand divisions of the rocks, not in mineral character, but in the fossil 
groups they contain, that with the clew we shall furnish, no one can 
easily mistake either of the formations within the hmits of the State. 
To obtain such desirable results, much time and labor is necessarily re- 
quired in a new and unexplored field. The obscurities of the ancient 
records of creation are often "perplexing in the extreme," and the na- 
turalist must patiently and minutely trace those slight characters and 
delicate distinctions which mark a species; make close comparisons 
with the analogous fossils of distant lands of which the geology is better 
known, and having thus a clew to the comparative ages of his various 
formations, he speaks with confidence on the probable occurrence, or 
the certain absence of coal and some valuable metals, and by a good 
description and accurate figures of fossil remains, enables every one 
who takes an interest in the subject speedily to acquire the important 
knowledge which has been slowly and laboriously gained. 
The occurrence of several formations of great thickness between the 
primary and coal series was unknown in this country before the publi- 
cation of the first annual reports of this survey. The splendid work of 
Murchison on the Silurian system, has given intense interest to their in- 
vestigation, as they nearly all belong to this system, to which I refer- 
red them in my first annual report as geologist of the third district, de- 
riving my information from a tabular list of organic remains, published 
by Murchison in a scientific journal. The appearance of his great work 
marks a distinct era in geological inquiry, inasmuch as it affords a 
standard of comparison for a series of the least known and yet most im- 
portant and universally extended formations of the globe, the same 
species of shells and corals being found in these rocks in Asia, Europe, 
Africa and ilmerica, and in all latitudes. The series in New- York is 
far more complete than that of Wales described bv Murchison ; the for- 
