The Rise of Geology in North America.
The Generating Centers.—In America, geology had its rise independently in three places: in the two scientific societies of Boston and Philadelphia, and dominantly in Benjamin Silliman of Yale College. Stated in another way, we may say that geology in America had its origin in the following pioneers and founders: first, in William Maclure at Philadelphia, and next in Benjamin Silliman at New Haven. Through the influence of the latter, Amos Eaton, the botanist, became a geologist and taught geology at Williams College and later at the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York. Through the same influence Rev. Edward Hitchcock also became a geologist and taught the subject after 1825 at Amherst College.
Silliman was the first to take up actively the teaching of mineralogy and geology based on collections of specimens. He spread the knowledge in popular lectures throughout the Eastern States, graduated many a student in the sciences, making of some of them professional teachers and geologists, provided all with a journal wherein they could publish their research, organized the first geological society and through his students the first official geological surveys, and by kind words and acts stimulated, fostered, and held together American scientific men for fifty years. Of him it has been truly said that he was “the guardian of American science from its childhood.”
The American Academy in Boston.—The second oldest scientific society, but the first one to publish on geological subjects, was the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston, instituted and publishing since 1780. Up to the time of the founding of this Journal, there had appeared in the publications of the American Academy about a dozen papers of a geologic character, none of which need to be mentioned here excepting one by S. L. and J. F. Dana, entitled “Outlines of the Mineralogy and Geology of Boston,” published in 1818. This is an early and important step in the elucidation of one of the most intricate geologic areas, and is further noteworthy for its geologic map, the third one to appear, the older ones being by Maclure and Hitchcock (Merrill).
| The Geological Column in 1822 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present American classification | Conybeare and Phillips 1822 | C. & P. orders | Wernerian orders | Other writers | ||
| Psychozoic or Recent | Alluvial | Superior Order | Newest Floetz Class | Tertiary Class | ||
| Cenozoic | Pleistocene | Diluvial | ||||
| Pliocene | Neogene | Upper Marine formation (Crag, Bagshot sand, and Isle of Wight) | ||||
| Miocene | ||||||
| Fresh-water formations | ||||||
| Oligocene | Paleogene | London Clay | ||||
| Eocene | Plastic Clay | |||||
| Mesozoic | Cretaceous | Chalk | Supermedial Order | Primitive Transition and Floetz Classes | Primitive Intermediate and Secondary classes | |
| Comanchian 1887 | Beds between Chalk and Oolite Series (Chalk Marle, Green Sand, Weald Clay, Iron Sand) | |||||
| Jurassic 1829 | Upper Oolitic division (Purbeck beds, Portland Oolite, Kimmeridge Clay) | |||||
| Middle Oolitic division (Coral Rag, Oxford Clay) | ||||||
| Lower Oolitic division (Cornbrash Stonesfield Slate, Forest Marble, Great Oolite, Fullers’ Earth, Inferior Oolite, Sand and Marlestone) | ||||||
| Lias | ||||||
| Triassic 1834 | New Red Sandstone | |||||
| Paleozoic | Permian 1841 | Magnesian Limestone | ||||
| Coal Measures | Medial or Carboniferous Order | |||||
| Pennsylvanian 1891 | ||||||
| Mississippian 1869 | Millstone Grit and Shale | |||||
| Old Red Sandstone | ||||||
| Devonian 1839 | ||||||
| Silurian 1835 | Unresolved Submedial and Inferior Orders | |||||
| Ordovician 1879 | ||||||
| (=Lower Silurian 1835) | ||||||
| Cambrian 1833 | ||||||
| Proterozoic | Keweenawan | Huronian 1852 | ||||
| Animikian | ||||||
| Huronian | ||||||
| Sudburian | ||||||
| Archeozoic | Keewatin | Laurentian 1853 | ||||
| Coutchiching | ||||||
Early Geology in Philadelphia.—The oldest scientific society is the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, started by the many-sided Benjamin Franklin in 1769, and which has published since 1771. Up to the time of the founding of the Journal in 1818, there had appeared in the publications of this society thirteen papers of a geologic nature, nearly all small building stones in the rising geologic story of North America. The only fundamental ones were Maclure’s Observations of 1809 and 1817. Later, in this same city, there was organized another scientific society that came to be for a long time the most active one in America. This was the Academy of Natural Sciences, started in 1812 with seven members, but it was not until 1817 and the election of William Maclure as its first president that the work of the Academy was of a far-reaching character. Here was built up not only a society for the advancement of the natural sciences and publications for the dissemination of such knowledge, but, what is equally important, the first large library and general museum.
William Maclure (1763–1840), correctly named by Silliman the “father of American geology,” was born and educated in Scotland, and died near Mexico City. A merchant of London until 1796, when he had already amassed “a considerable fortune,” he made a first short visit to New York City in 1782. In 1796 he again came to America, this time to become a citizen of this country and a liberal patron of science.
About 1803, single-handed and unsustained by government patronage, Maclure interested himself most zealously and efficiently in American geology. In 1809 he published his Observations on the Geology of the United States, Explanatory of a Geological Map. This work he revised “on a yet more extended scale,” issuing it in 1817 with 130 pages of text, accompanied by a large colored geological map.
Silliman, the Pioneer Promoter of Geology.—In 1806 when Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864) began actively to teach chemistry and mineralogy, all the sciences in America were in a very backward state, and the earth sciences were not recognized as such in the curricula of any of our colleges. Silliman gave his first lecture in chemistry on April 4, 1804. In the summer of that year, Yale College asked him to go to England to purchase material for the College, and great possibilities for broadening his knowledge now loomed before him. As Silliman himself (43, 225, 1842) has told the interesting story of his sojourn in England and Scotland, it is worth while to restate a part of it here.
“Passing over to England in the spring of 1805, and fixing my residence for six months in London, I found there no school, public or private, for geological instruction, and no association for the cultivation of the science, which was not even named in the English universities.” In geology “Edinburgh was then far in advance of London.... Prof. Jameson having recently returned from the school of Werner, fully instructed in the doctrines of his illustrious teacher, was ardently engaged to maintain them, and his eloquent and acute friend, the late Dr. John Murray, was a powerful auxiliary in the same cause; both of these philosophers strenuously maintaining the ascendancy of the aqueous over the igneous agencies, in the geological phenomena of our planet.