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PAN- 
AMERICAN GEOLOGIST 
VoL. XXXVIII August, 1922 No. 1 
INTRODUCTION OF MODERN GEOLOGY INTO 
AMERICA 
By Charles Keyes 
It was a queer, fortuitous, and yet quite noteworthy circum¬ 
stance that the precepts which were formulated by William Smith, 
the father of modern geology, and which still lie at the bottom of 
our accepted scheme of geological correlation and chronology, 
should have been put to test practically in a then remote and un¬ 
known corner of our continent almost as soon as they were an¬ 
nounced in England, the land of their birth. 
That America should so early and from such an unexpected 
quarter as far away Iowa, in the Upper Mississippi Valley, furn¬ 
ish substantial aid in support of the newly promulgated principles 
was a fact of something more than passing notice. The attendant 
circumstances were long since all but forgotten. In the few 
casual references made to them in the passing years either their 
true import was misunderstood or familiarity with the underlying 
conditions was lacking. 
Both as the first successful application of modern principles of 
geology in the Western hemisphere and as the maiden attempt, 
as it proved to be, at world-wide stratigraphical correlation, this 
event must ever remain one of the outstanding features in this his¬ 
tory of geological science. 
Strangest of circumstances was it that this primal American 
