Biographical Notice of Eoenezer Emmons. — Marcou. 3 
nation at the School of Mines in France, through the influence and 
patronage of general Lafa3'ette, and during his stay in Paris, he 
profited by the great and unique advantage, then existing, of fol- 
lowing the lectures of such naturalists as : Alexander Brongniart, 
1' abbe Hauy, George Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Brochant de 
Yilliers and Berthier. Having returned to America, Yanuxem 
devoted himself to mining pursuits, but with a constant lookout 
for geological researches, and it was he who made the first modern 
classification of our rocks, after the old Wernerian classification of 
MacOlure. To Vanuxem we owe the discovery of the Cretaceous 
system and the exact classification as Transition strata of all the 
beds regarded then as < ' Secondar} T " in the states of New York, 
Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. He saw at once that 
the classification of professor Eaton of all the rocks of the four 
district areas, from Otsego and Tioga to Erie and Niagara 
counties, as very modern secondary groups, was untenable and 
incorrect, and to him is due the exact classification of the strata 
of the fourth and in part also of the third district. 
Conrad, a very able conchologist of the Lamarck and Desha yes 
school, called at once the attention ' ' to the importance of a knowl- 
edge of organic remains " for the classification of the New York 
strata; and in his first report, of 1836, issued February, 1837, he 
gave a good general classification of the principal masses of strata 
from the Calcareous sandstone of the Mohawk valley to the Onon- 
daga limestone series. Appointed palaeontologist of the state surve}-, 
he helped to give more details to the classification and nomenclature 
made and used, until he left the survey in 1841, on account of 
poor health,— a great and irreparable loss, which has weighed 
heavil}- ever since on the progress of American palaeozoic palaeon- 
tology and geology. 
But to Emmons is due the most difficult part of the geological 
survey of New York, and to him mainly we owe the very remark- 
able classification of the New York strata into two great series or 
systems, the Taconic system and the New York system. And to 
him also is due the division of the New York system into four 
great divisions or series, • the Champlain, Ontario, Helderberg and 
Erie. 
As soon as appointed state geologist, Emmons searched for an 
assistant acquainted with mineralogy to help him to survey the 
iron ores abundantly distributed in the second district. He wrote 
