4 The American Geologist. J"i>' is^'*- 
who were called upon to use this book. Critics and review- 
ers with scantily veiled disgust held this fifty up to scorn 
as a blistering example of the sin of species making. And 
yet this was a singularly fertile and suggestive bit of work, 
chiefly of Beecher's conception. The stock of the Leptodes- 
mas blossomed out in late Devonic time into a profusion of ex- 
pression ; it was a rare illustration of racial vitality with vari- 
ation and amongst thousands of specimens all possible vari- 
ation of form, outline and proportion were present. These 
things appear on the pages of the book as so many alleged 
species but Beecher had himself arrived at most of them 
by arranging progressive series in various lines and then 
seeking out their missing links. At the end of one of these 
volumes are two cuts printed on the text pages. Nothing is 
said of their mode of preparation and the user would be very 
likely to pass them by as zinc cuts made from stipple draw- 
ings. These were the product of a device conce^'ved by 
Beecher for making a drawing on ground glass \y'\ih. litho- 
graphic crayon, as a subject for photoengraving. But though 
he devised and perfected the process independently it was 
not employed as the inventor had the melancholy experience 
of finding his process already copyrighted. 
I have referred to these various matters for h.ere in a pre- 
tentious work in which the young paleontologist took his first 
part we find such decided evidence of the qualit\ of his 
biologic concepts, his preparative skill, his artistic facility and 
his mechanical ingenuity and dexterity. 
Professor Hall had a fearless way of committing his State 
to his scientific projects. He would begin several elaborate 
and very different monographs at once, havmg drawing and 
lithography done for each until he involved a provision froin 
the State necessary for the completion of all. A single volume 
would be years on the way, and so it happened that m Beech- 
er's earlv years at Albany a memoir on the Devonian ceph- 
alopods, gastropods and pteropods appeared almost simulta- 
neously with the other and though this was more nearly 
completed at the time of his coming, there were many evi- 
dences of nice final touches on the Cephalopoda which came 
from him. With the exception of a few supplementary descrip- 
tions (if cci-ihalopod species iml)lislied in a later volume of the 
