118 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
man and the young, trained enthusiast. With that acquaintance came 
long summers together of excursions into all the rocks of western 
New York, with a perfect abandon of delight that made him oblivious 
to the carking things of business. Because of his miller’s asthma 
Mr Luther was obliged to give over his hereditary occupation and 
as a means of support he opened a small haberdashery in the village, 
but no summer day with its temptations afield was missed because 
of mere business. Often and again the key to the store was turned, 
and the devoted two, one of whom had nothing else to do and both 
of them everything to learn, were off and away. To Mr Luther it 
was all a new world; every fact observed, every fossil found had 
to be interpreted for him and his zeal for these interpretations led 
him to close and careful reading and study of the science during the 
long intervals between summer and summer. Mr Luther had only 
a common school education supplemented by a year or two of study 
at thé old academy at Canandaigua, but his mind had the poise and 
balance of a magistrate’s and the receptiveness of an acolyte’s. Be- 
sides and above this, he had a training in wisdom from an extraor- 
dinary mother who herself took counsel of all the works of God. 
Thirteen summers of these adventures into the rocks and thirteen 
winters at study of the science, years that were productive of dis- 
coveries of no little moment to geology, gave Mr Luther a perfectly 
competent equipment to handle the more obvious problems of the 
rocks in the well-built country of western New York. 
In 1891 a start was made on a great shaft at Livonia, Livingston 
county, which was to go down to the salt, a proposed excavation 
covering a prism 18 feet square and as long as the depth of the’ salt 
below the surface which proved to be at 1400 feet. It was to be a 
great plug cut out of the heart of the most richly fossiliferous rocks 
in the State and into the unsolved succession of the salt-bearing 
beds. It afforded a rare opportunity for the extensive acquisition of 
detailed information of the order and variations of the succession of 
rocks and faunas, one never before or since afforded. To this work, 
continuous through summer and winter, Mr Luther was assigned on 
behalf of this Department and thus he entered formally on his 
official service for the State. The work led naturally into a wider 
study of the geology of the salt formations throughout the region 
of their best development, and in this larger field Mr Luther brought 
together data whose usefulness has become evident. During 
these years we were largely without adequate topographic maps for 
the plotting of areal geology, but as these became available for the 
