226 The Mesozoic Series of New Mexico. — Marcou. 
of the Neocomian of the Jura mountains of France. Besides I 
had had the precious advantage of having carefully explored 
the whole series of the Trias, Jura and Cretaceous systems in 
central France, in Switzerland and southern Germany. My 
classification and nomenclature for the "Jura salinois" had 
been accepted and used by Bernardh Studer in his "Geologic 
der Schweiz," by Albert Oppel in his "Die Jura formation, 
Englands, Frankreichs, und siidwestlichen Deutschlands," by 
Alcide d'Orbigny in his "Cour de paleontologie et de geologic 
stratigraphiques," by F. Jules Pictet, in his "Traite de Paleon- 
tologie," and by all observers and writers on the Mesozoic 
series of central Europe ; and they are still used even to this 
day as typical for the Jura area. 
Notwithstanding such an excellent preparation, and the care 
I took to submit my fossils to Louis Agassiz, d'Orbigny, 
d'Archiac, Deshayes, Pictet, etc., my observations and classi- 
fications along the 35th parallel were not only opposed, but 
rejected in a lump by an association of geologists led by 
Messrs. James Hall and J. D. Dana. The character of the 
opposition may be sufficiently indicated by the quotation 
of a single paragraph of Mr. Dana, who says : "In conclusion, 
we would say that our reconsideration of the labors of Mr. 
Marcou in America has not raised our estimate of their value. 
We know well that if any American geologist had mapped our 
strata and synchronized those of America and Europe on 
such data as have satisfied the author of the 'Geology of 
North America' he would have been deemed young in the 
science, with much yet to learn before he would have a sober 
hearing." {Amer. Jr. Soi., vol. xxvi. p. 323, Nov., 1858.) 
Themostsingularpartofthatoppositionisthat it is made by 
persons, no one of whom has ever studied with anything like 
thoroughness, practically and theoretically, a single bed of the 
Mesozoic rocks of Europe ; and no one of whom then, in 1857, 
had seen anywhere west of the Mississippi river the American 
Mesozoic rocks. When read calmly by unprejudiced geolo- 
gists and by observers who know practically any of the typi- 
cal regions of the Trias of Wlirtenberg, of the Jurassic of the 
Jura mountains, of Burgundy, Normandy and England ; of 
the Neocomian of Neuchatel ; of the Gault and White Chalk 
of the Paris basin ; and who have made practical researches in 
the field in Texas, Kansas, the Indian territory, New Mexico 
