PREFACE. 
IX 
This department of the Geological Survey of the State was commit¬ 
ted to my charge in 1843 : Vol. i was completed and published in 1847 ; 
and Yol. n, so far as regarded my own labors, was completed in 1850, 
and the work of the third volume was at that time in progress. In the 
spring of that year, legislative enactment removed the direction of this 
work from the Governor of the State, and placed it in the hands of the 
Secretary of State, who was “ authorised and directed to take charge 
“ of all matters appertaining to the prosecution and publication of the 
“ Geological Survey of the State and in the third section of the same 
law, it was made “ the duty of the Secretary of State and the Secre- 
“ tary of the Regents of the University, to report to the next Legislature 
“ a plan for the final completion of the said survey, and to submit the 
“ estimate of the cost of such completion.” 
In a Report from this Commission to the Legislature, a proposition 
was made to pay the Palaeontologist “ two thousand five hundred dol- 
“ lars” on the “ presentation of each successive volume, commencing 
“ with the third, to the Secretary of Statewhich volume was to 
“ contain the manuscript letter-press ready for printing, and be ac- 
“ companied with the very fossils described.” 
This “ proposition” was “ deemed a just and liberal one, , ' > and it seems 
to have been anticipated that the work would go on under such condi¬ 
tions. The sum of money here proposed to be paid to defray the entire 
expenses of collecting the fossils and the study and description of the 
same, together with the labor of superintending the drawings and en¬ 
graving, was in fact entirely inadequate to pay for the collection of the 
fossils necessary for a single volume, and left besides this more than 
four years of labor to be performed by the Palaeontologist without any 
remuneration whatever. Under these circumstances the work could not 
go on, and it became by this act virtually suspended in the early part 
of 1850. 
From the commencement of the work, the expenses of making the 
collections had been borne by myself. These collections, made up to that 
time, not only embraced most of those of the first and second volumes, 
