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and descriptive matter relating to Missouri, and especially to the mines and topography.
The Long expedition of 1819,[1] similar in nature to the Lewis and Clarke and the Pike expeditions, was equally poor in geological results.
In the year 1821, Thomas Nuttal, the botanist, recorded certain observations on the "Geological Structure of the Valley of the Mississippi"[2] in which he alludes to the limestones of the valley and correlates them with Martin's Petrifacta Derbiensis. This, as Professor H. S. Williams has already pointed out,[3] is probably the first recognition of "Carboniferous rocks" in the region. Soon after this, in 1822, Dr. Edwin James called attention to the existence of a sandstone in the Ozark mountains of southeastern Missouri, with a clay slate, like the primitive slate of New England, intervening between it and the granite.[4] This was the first suggestion of the presence of Cambrian or Lower Silurian rocks in Missouri.
During the next ten and more years much attention was attracted to Missouri and other Mississippi valley states, through the extension of mining operations, especially in Iowa and Wisconsin. In volume 12 of the American Journal of Science, 1827, there are a number of references to mines and descriptions of minerals found.
During the years 1834 and 1835, G. W. Featherstonehaugh made his well known trip through Missouri and other western states.[5] In his reports he frequently refers to the limestones along the Mississippi as of Carboniferous age, and to the abundance of fossils in the exposures between St. Louis and Herculaneum, some of which he has found identical with European
- ↑ Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mts., etc., 1823.
- ↑ Jour. Acad. Sci., Philadelphia, 1821, Vol. 2.
- ↑ Bull. No. 80, U. S. Geol. Surv., pp. 25 and 137.
- ↑ Jour. Acad. Sci., Philadelphia, 1822, Vol. 2.
Also: C. D. Walcott, Bull. 81, U. S. Geol. Surv. - ↑ Geol. Report of the Elevated Country between the Missouri and Red Rivers, 1835.
Reconnaissance to the Green Bay and the Wisconsin Territory, 1836.