PALEONTOLOGICAL GEOLOGY 
265 
over the summit of the arched tract. The circumstance that these 
remnants yet survive the vissitudes of profound and prolonged 
erosion is conclusive evidence of the recency of the uplifting of 
the region. There appears to be, therefore, small doubt but that 
all members of the Devonic and Carbonic sections once extended, 
at no very distant date, completely over the Ozark district, as they 
still do over the basal belt around. 
Keye:s 
James Hall and American Paleontology. The official career 
of James Hall of Albany extended over a period of neary sixty- 
three years. During this entire stretch of time, he served the 
same State without interruption. He was a youth of twenty-five 
years when he entered this service; an old man of eighty-seven 
when this service ceased. It is probable that this record of official 
scientific activity has never been equaled in duration. During 
his life time he touched the rapidly developing science in many 
phases; in nearly all through the periods of romantic adventures.^ 
American Paleontology’s great debt to Hall lies not in the 
monumental tomes in which he described such hosts of ancient 
organic remains found in the rocks, not in his strong personality 
by which he stimulated geological investigations throughout the 
land, but it rests on the deep impress of his genius in evolving a 
broad, elastic and lasting scheme of rock-classification for the 
North American continent. Although his opus magnum, the New 
York System, was not destined to survive as a unit as he had 
planned, nor to take the place of Murchison’s Siluria as he had 
hoped, his State’s rock succession stands today the real founda¬ 
tion of American stratigraphy. 
This prodigious effort was not accomplished without vast exer¬ 
tion, tireless energy, and discouragements aplenty. It was one 
long and continuous struggle against man and nature. No more 
charming or exciting relation could be had than that lately told 
by Doctor Clarke.^ “The story we have written has had for its 
burden Hall’s influence on science in its personal setting and back¬ 
ground. But we may appropriately sum up the matter in epitaphic 
form. James Hall was a pioneer, taking the best knowledge of 
his day for the foundation of his work. Quickly and keenly he 
enlarged and built upon it. -No one in America had caught and 
interpreted the meaning of the stratigraphic record as he did in 
1 Life of James Hall, by John M. Clarke, 565 pp., Albany, 1921. 
