Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/710

694 the course of this journey he visited all the iron-works where flasks had been erected in England, Belgium, the south and west of France, and in Austria. In the autumn of 1866 he sailed for Brest, by the order of his physician, and, traveling through Italy, returned to perform his duties as United States Commissioner at the opening of the Paris Exposition of 1867. After struggling with a painful illness three months, he walked through the Vosges Mountains, and remained the rest of the season at Vevay in Switzerland, and then went to Egypt as the guest of Charles Hale, the United States consul-general at that time, with whom he went up the river to the first cataract in one of the viceroy's yachts, returning to Italy, England, and the United States in the spring of 1868, but abstaining from all serious business until the end of that year.

His health slowly improved, but four years elapsed before he could do an ordinary day's work; and it has been his habit ever since to seek relaxation from business, when too long continued, by short trips to Europe. Such were made in 1872, 1874, 1876, 1878, 1880, 1882, and 1884, in each case remaining abroad only two or three weeks.

In 1872 Mr. Lesley was appointed Professor of Geology and Dean of the Faculty to the newly established scientific department of the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1874 he was made chief geologist of Pennsylvania under a new act providing for a complete geological resurvey of that State. He had, in 1842, constructed the State geological map and sections for Pennsylvania, and in 1846-'47 revised them and prepared the drawings and a large part of the text of the subsequently published report on the geology of that State. His work as a geologist has been more especially devoted to the coal formations of North America, and he is regarded as a chief authority on all questions connected therewith. His "Manual of Coal and its Topography" (1856) is esteemed alike for its classification of the Appalachian coal strata and for its illustrations of topographical geology. Most of Professor Lesley's personal field-work remains unpublished, such as his elaborate survey of the Cape Breton coal-fields in 1862-'63; his topographical and geological survey of the Broad Top coal-field, which occupied two years; his contoured map of the Kishkaminitas and Loyalhanna country in Western Pennsylvania, ordered by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, which also occupied two years; his survey of the Tennessee coal-fields west of Knoxville, etc.

Abstracts from his reports of surveys of the iron-ore deposits of Huntingdon and Centre Counties, and of Cumberland and Franklin Counties, Pennsylvania; of the titaniferous iron-ore range of North Carolina; of the Embreeville district in East Tennessee; of the geology of Tazewell, Russell, and Wise Counties in Virginia; of coal, iron, and petroleum districts in Western Pennsylvania; and of the surface petroleums of the Sandy River country in Kentucky—were published, with maps and woodcuts, in the "Proceedings of the American