PREFACE. 
viii 
below the Trenton limestone, intending to extend the work of collecting to all 
the known localities of primordial fossils within, and adjacent to the State. The 
result of the first season’s work proved so unsatisfactory and disappointing that 
this plan was abandoned with regret, and nothing farther was attempted in 
that direction. 
From the time of the completion of Volume Y, part ii, at the close of 1879, 
the failure to make appropriations for the publication of this work, left in the 
hands of the State Geologist a large amount of matter prepared, or partially 
ready for publication. Of this material were eighty plates of Lamellibranchiata, 
which, with twelve additional plates, now constitute the illustrations of Volume 
V, part i, published in two volumes. A considerable number of the plates pub¬ 
lished in Volume VI had, at that time, already been lithographed; besides eight 
plates of Crustacea for Volume VII. Of the Brachiopoda, which in the present 
arrangement are to constitute Volume VIII, twenty-seven plates had been 
lithographed when, in 1881, all progress in the Paleontology of New York 
was suspended. 
Upon resuming the work, under the limitations of the law of 1883, it 
became necessary for the author to content himself with a volume restricted to 
the description and illustration of the Devonian Crustacea, and in order to 
make this one of a size approximating the other volumes, it became necessary 
to include the supplementary material of Volume V, part ii, originally intended 
for a separate publication, and which here follows the principal matter giving 
title to the volume. 
Under existing circumstances, it is not at all probable that the author will 
ever have the opportunity of reviewing and revising his earlier work upon the 
Trilobitic faunas of the older rocks, but he may hope that in the near future 
the scientific institutions of New York may feel it incumbent upon them to 
present to the public a work upon these fossils worthy of the subject and of 
the State whose position is so well established as the pioneer and munificent 
patron in the science of Paleontology. There is no longer any difficulty in 
finding willing and able hands to perform such a work, and the material, though 
scattered in the collections of different institutions, could readily be brought 
