Classification and Terminology of the Cambrian Brachiopoda: With Two Plates (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Classification and Terminology of the Cambri...)
Excerpt from Classification and Terminology of the Cambrian Brachiopoda: With Two Plates
We do not know of any brachiopoda in strata older than that con taining the Olenellus or Lower Cambrian fauna. That such existed in pre-cambrian time seems almost certain when the advanced stage of development of some of the earliest known forms is considered.
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Pre-cambrian Fossiliferous Formations
Charles Doolittle Walcott
Biographical Memoir Of Samuel Pierpont Langley, 1834-1906 (1912)
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Charles Doolittle Walcott was an American paleontologist, administrator of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927, and geologist.
Background
Charles Doolittle Walcott was born at New York Mills, Oneida County, New York. He was the youngest of four children of Charles Doolittle and Mary (Lane) Walcott. He was a descendant of William Walcott, who emigrated from England to Salem, Massachussets, in 1637. Since his father died when Charles was a child, he was early thrown upon his own resources.
Education
His education was limited to that provided by the public schools and the Utica Academy. His systematic training ceased altogether in 1868.
He received a number of honorary degrees, among them that of Sc. D. from Cambridge University in 1909 and that of Ph. D. from Kongelige Frederiks Universitet, Norway, in 1911.
Career
He worked for two years as a clerk in a hardware store, meanwhile showing a growing interest in natural history, which manifested itself mainly in the collection of fossils and minerals. In 1871 he turned definitely toward a geological career. Going to Trenton Falls, N. Y. , he associated himself with W. P. Rust, a farmer, under an arrangement that gave him his board and lodgings with a certain part of his time for study. There he formed a collection of Trenton fossils sufficient to attract the attention of Prof. J. L. R. Agassiz of Harvard. It was arranged that he should enter upon a course of study under Agassiz's supervision, but Agassiz's death prevented the carrying out of the plan. In 1876 Walcott entered the employ of James Hall, 1811-1898, state geologist of New York, at Albany. In July 1879 he was appointed a field assistant with the newly organized United States Geological Survey under the direction of Clarence King. He remained with the survey under the regime of King and J. W. Powell, gradually advancing in position. Until 1879 his work had been mainly directed to a study of the Cambrian formations of the New England states and areas east of the Mississippi. His first assignment under King was in the Grand Canyon region of Colorado and Utah. In 1882 he collaborated with Arnold Hague in a survey of the Eureka mining district of Nevada, gradually assuming administrative duties as well, until in 1893 he was promoted to the position of geologist in charge. On the retirement of Powell in 1894 he was selected as his successor and remained in that position until 1907. As director of the survey, Walcott simply became head of a body of scientific men already organized, of whom he had, through association, a thorough working knowledge. It remained for him to develop and strengthen the organization on lines already laid down, and this he did most effectively through affiliation with state organizations and professors in the various universities. He also took up the work of reclamation begun by Powell and had a very active part in the work which led eventually to the establishment of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Mines. At the time of his resignation in 1907 the annual appropriations for the support of the survey had more than tripled, while the personnel, both in number and efficiency, exceeded that of any similar existing organization. But Walcott was not more interested in administration than in paleontology, and the demands of so large and growing an organization he found irksome. When in 1907 he was offered the secretaryship of the Smithsonian Institution he welcomed it as a possible relief from some of his most wearisome administrative burdens. That his hopes in this direction were not to be fully realized was early apparent. The growing activities of the National Museum, the Zoological Park, and other governmental bureaus administered by the institution, together with those of the Smithsonian proper, all demanded time and attention. Further, owing to his official position and proved executive ability, he was involved in many other projects. He exerted great influence in the founding of the Freer Gallery, and was active in the founding and organization of the Carnegie Institution, the National Research Council, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, over which he presided until his death. He was secretary and chairman of the executive committee of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Institution, and treasurer (1899 - 1902), vice-president (1907 - 17), and president (1917 - 23) of the National Academy of Sciences. The World War brought other duties. Later he took an active part in inaugurating the air-mail service, in organizing work in surveying and mapping by aerial photography, and in drafting the Air Commerce Act of 1926. In the meantime the institution over which he presided was threatened with decline to secondary rank through the shrinking value of its endowment and the vastly larger endowments of institutions newly organized. Plans to check this decline were set in motion a short time before Walcott's death. The demands made upon him were certainly sufficient to warrant a complete abandonment of all personal scientific work. Yet season after season he found time for field work, mainly in the Canadian Rockies, returning each year enthusiastic over new materials and discoveries, but in later years lacking in stamina for his manifold duties. He did extensive work on the Cambrian field of geology and wrote some notable papers on the organization of the trilobite. His first paleontological paper, "Description of a New Species of Trilobite, " appeared in the Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science in July 1875; his last, Pre-Devonian Paleozoic Formations of the Cordilleran Province of Canada (1928), sometime after his death. Of the upwards of 222 titles in his bibliography, 110 dealt with the Cambrian formations. Of his faunal studies, the most comprehensive is said to be "The Fauna of the Lower Cambrian or Olenellus Zone"; his most monumental work is his Cambrian Brachiopoda, Monograph 51 of the United States Geological Survey. The most striking of his field discoveries was that of the Middle Cambrian Burgess shale of British Columbia, with its undreamed-of wealth of fossil invertebrate remains still retaining recognizable impressions of their softer parts. From these beds alone he had at the time of his death described seventy genera of fossil forms, and a hundred and thirty species. He was a member of the leading scientific societies in Europe and America. After Walcott's death in Washington, DC, his samples, photographs, and notes remained in storage until their rediscovery by a new generation of paleontologists in the late 1960s.
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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)
Views
Quotations:
"Nature has a habit of placing some of her most attractive treasures in places where it is difficult to locate and obtain them. "
Personality
Walcott was a man of large frame, tall, erect, and impressive in appearance; in his younger days he wore a full reddish beard. He was reserved, dignified, and calm, with a slight stiffness of manner that at first gave an impression of coldness. In the midst of the most distracting administrative duties he could always find immediate relief in scientific research.
Connections
On June 22, 1888, he married Helena Burrows Stevens, by whom he had three sons and a daughter. After the death of his first wife in a railroad accident in 1911, he married Mary Morris Vaux on June 30, 1914.