MODERN GEOLOGY IN AMERICA 
7 
At any rate, Nuttall is in America scarcely a year before he is 
putting his geological knowledge to test. His familiarity with 
Martin’s Petrifacta Derbiensia and Smith’s principles, clearly in¬ 
dicates that he must have acquired his information at least several 
years previously. Then, too, his intimate acquaintance with that 
famous pioneer geologist, William McClure, for twenty years 
president of the American Philosophical Society at that period, 
should not escape notice. Two other memoirs, besides the one on 
the Mississippi Valley, partly geological but chiefly mineralogical 
in character, on the rocks and minerals of Hoboken and Sparta, 
New Jersey, and the many keen observations on the rocks re¬ 
corded in his journal of a pedestrian trip from Philadelphia to 
Pittsburgh, amply attest his unusual intimacy with matters geologi¬ 
cal. 
Notwithstanding the fact that the brief memoir which Thomas 
Nuttall published on lowa-land and the contiguous regions at the 
beginning of the last century is the only one which he seems ever 
to have printed upon strictly geological subjects, so important are 
the facts and principles set forth for the first time in this country 
in this simple, single, short contribution to the literature of Amer¬ 
ican terranal correlation that it places its author in the front 
rank of pioneer geologists, not only of Iowa, but of our Western 
Hemisphere. Although one of the foremost botanists of his day, 
and an ornithologist of world-wide reputation, his great service 
in pointing out first by method and by means the fundamental con¬ 
cepts of modern historical geology in America should not be 
forgotten. 
The important part which an utter wilderness in the very heart 
of a dark continent chances to play in the founding of one of the 
great modern sciences is worthy of especial record. In the his¬ 
tory of that science as developed in the New World the circum¬ 
stances surrounding the earliest discoveries deserve connected reit¬ 
eration in a chapter all their own. They influence the whole 
course of later geological discovery. They seem destined yet to 
establish the standard schematic succession for the entire Amer¬ 
ican continent. 
For several reasons, therefore, this pioneer scientific work is of 
exceptional historic interest. It is the first time that modern 
geological principles were successfully applied in this country. It 
