Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/191

Rh have been a printer of the Benjamin Franklin order, since while engaged at his trade he became proficient in the knowledge of the sciences, Greek and Latin, and kindred subjects. During the period of six or seven years that he was in London he appears to have made the acquaintance of a number of the scientific men of the day. At least it is probable that at this time he acquired some familiarity with Smith's discoveries, which were at that date attracting wide attention from English scientists. It is also quite possible that Nuttall gained much of his scientific information through setting up the types for those very memoirs which have since become geologic classics. It is not unlikely also that he even met Smith, since the latter is known to have been often in London at that time, and to have taken up his permanent residence there several years before the printer-naturalist left his native country.

At any rate, Nuttall had been in America scarcely a year before he was putting his geological knowledge to test. His familiarity with Martin's "Petrifacta Derbiensia" and Smith's principles clearly indicates that he must certainly have acquired his information at least several years previous. Then, too, his acquaintance with that pioneer American geologist, William McClure, for twenty years president of the American Philosophical Society at this period, should not escape notice. Two other papers, partly geological in nature but chiefly mineralogical in character, on the rocks and minerals of Hoboken, and of Sparta, New Jersey, and the many keen observations on the rocks recorded in his journal of a trip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh attest his unusual intimacy with matters in geology.

Notwithstanding the fact that the brief memoir which Thomas Nuttall published on Iowa-land and the contiguous regions was the only one which he seems ever to have printed on strictly geological subjects so important are the principles set forth for the first time in this single, simple, short contribution to the literature of American terranal correlation that it places its author in the front rank among pioneer geologists, not only of Iowa, but of our country. Although one of the foremost botanists of his day, and an ornithologist of world-wide reputation his great service in first pointing out by method and by means the fundamental concepts of modern historical geology in America should not be forgotten.