This survey has developed the older fossiliferous rocks, with a
fullness and distinctness unknown elsewhere. Hence European
savans study the New York Reports with eagerness. In 1850, as I
entered the Woodwardian Museum, in the University of Cambridge,
in England, I found Professor McCoy busy with a collection of
Silurian fossils before him, which he was studying with Hall's
first volume of Paleontology as his guide; and in the splendid
volumes, entitled _British Paleozoric Rocks and Fossils_, which
appeared last year as the result of those researches, I find
Professor Hall denominated the great American Paleontologist. I
tell you, Sir, that this survey has given New York a reputation
throughout the learned world, of which she may well be proud. Am
I told that it will, probably, cost half a million? Very well.
The larger the sum, the higher will be the reputation of New
York for liberality; and what other half million expended in our
country, has developed so many new facts or thrown so much light
upon the history of the globe, or won so world-wide and enviable
a reputation?