294 The American Geologist. May, 1901. 
the prior name of "Ripley" for the uppermost cretaceous. 
Tuomey had at that time a portion of his second report in 
manuscript ; and as unfortunately he died six months after 
our conference, after a protracted illness, that report, which 
was posthumously edited by J. W. Mallet, does not show the 
latest phase of Tuomey's knowledge of the cretaceous stages. 
As his collections were mostly destroyed during the war, it is 
of interest to record here, from my personal observation, that 
almost all the cretaceous fossils marked "Miss." in list "A," 
p. 257. of that report, were from the "Tombigby Sand" and 
the immediately overlying portion of the '"Rotten Limestone." (^ 
l/^ in L ownde s county. Miss. : the "Ammonites Binodosus," re- 
corded in the same list, from Eutaw, Ala., was considered by 
him as a "leading fossil" of the lower cretaceous clays ; the 
specimens were all silicified and in excellent preservation. 
As regards the tertiary formations, Tuomey was strongly 
impressed with the fact that the older stages reappear above 
the drainage level to the southward, after sinking out of view 
at the St. Stephens l:)luff ; and he suggested to me then that 
"- what I subsequently named the "Grand Gulf rocks" might be 
equivalents of the "Burstone" sandstones of South Carolina. 
So far as this point is concerned I was therefore strongly 
impressed with the same ideas that have been so persistently 
set forth by Otto Meyer. Having obtained from Tuomey 
references to all publications then extant on the cretaceous 
and tertiary of the south and west, I returned to Oxford in 
November, across a country rendered almost impassable by 
copious rains. 
I found matters rapidly coming to a crisis at the Univer- 
sity. Harper had been provided with a separate ambulance 
outfit, and had taken the field for a few weeks during the sea- 
son of 1856 in the northwestern counties; but he seemed to be 
unable to keep away from Oxford for any length of time. Fi- 
nally, the dissatisfaction of the board of trustees with his per- 
sonal acts, in relation both to the survey and to the University, 
came to a head in November, 1856, when he was forced to re- 
sign. I was continued as assistant, with compensation in- 
creased to $1,500 per annum, and was for the time being 
nlaced in charge of the survey, the office work of which I con- 
tinued during the winter. 
