82 The American Geologist. February, 1892 
any glaring extent he traveled by Cahaba, Prairie Bluff, Clai- 
borne and the Zeuglodon locality in Macon county, as far as St. 
Stephens on the Tombigbee; and thence by Camden and Allen- 
ton, on the east side of the Alabama river, to Selma. No richer 
or more attractive region was ever open to the geologist. He 
stood where the veteran geologist Conrad had stood; he studied 
where the distinguished Morton had studied; he explored the 
hole where Dr. Koch had exhumed his //ydrarchos,and picked up . 
the vertebre of that serpent-like cetacean with his own hands. 
He gathered large quantities of Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils, 
and from Claiborne he shipped two barrels full to the Smithsonian 
Institution. The yellow fever was raging in Mobile, and had 
almost reached the districts which he visited; but a different fever 
was raging in his veins. At Claiborne he collected a quantity of 
undescribed fossils from the lowest beds of the Kocene, and fixed 
the northern limits of that formation twenty miles further north 
than had been mapped by Tuomey. For miles south of Selma 
he saw the fields overstrewn with ///ppurites which the planters 
profanely burned into lime—as in Macon county they were using 
the precious vertebre of Zeuglodon for ‘‘dog-irons” (andirons), 
stiles and gate-weights. His collections arrived at Selma in good 
condition, and he devoted the remainder of his vacation to assort- 
ing and determining them. 
The collections sent to the Smithsonian Institution were highly appre- 
ciated by Prof. Baird, who wrote, December 26, 1853; “The collection of 
fishes is magnificent, nearly all undoubtedly new, six species of Pomotzs 
alone, cannot give complete lists at present as the genera, even, of some 
are indeterminable. The whole is the richest collection we have ever 
received from the south. * * * Unless I much mistake you and 
your abilities it won’t be many years before you will be called to a big 
professorship somewhere north or east. Mark my words for that ”— 
Nine days after these words were penned he was elected to a chair in 
the University of Michigan. 
It will illustrate how long the scientific investigator must wait, some- 
times, after the seed is sown, before he can reap his harvest, to note that 
the geological specimens collected on this southern Alabama trip in 
18538, and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, were investigated first in 
L880, when Dr. C. A. White took them in hand, and among others de- 
scribed Lvogyra winchelli from those sent from Prairie Bluff, on the Ala- 
bama river.* 
*Proceedings U.S. Nat. Mus., 20 May, 1880, p. 294, pl. 1, figs. 2 and 3, 
and pl. 11, figs. 1 and 2; also Annual report of the Hayden Survey for 
1876, pl. x11, figs., 1 a,b,e,d. Compare the Annual Report of the Institu- 
tion, 1853, pp. 51, 52, 57. 
a 
