to classify. Rocks were then classified chiefly by their mineralogical characters, and the aid which the science has since learned to derive from fossils in determining the chronology and classification of rocks, was scarcely known here, and had only just begun to be appreciated in Europe. We are indebted, nevertheless, to Professor Eaton for the commencement of that independence of European classification which has been found indispensable in describing the New York system. For he remarks: "After examining our rocks with as much care and accuracy as I am capable of doing, I venture to say that we have at least five distinct and continuous strata, neither of which can with propriety take any name hitherto given and defined in any European treatise which has reached this country." Connected with the report, there was a view of the section of the rocks extending in the line of the canal through the state, and another from the Atlantic ocean to Pittsfield in Massachusetts, for the latter of which we are indebted to Edward Hitchcock, who has since completed a geological survey of Massachusetts, under the direction of the government of that state. Professor Eaton enumerated nearly all the rocks in Western New York, in their order of succession; and his enumeration has, with one or two exceptions, proved correct. It is a matter of surprise that he has recognised, at so early a period, the old red sandstone on the Catskill mountains; a discovery, the reality of which has since been proved by fossil tests. Had he followed up this discovery, he could not have failed to learn what an immense series of rocks lay below the old red sandstone, at that time entirely unclassified.

The munificence of Mr. Van Rensselaer, in producing such results, is illustrated by this remark addressed to him in Professor Eaton's report: "You have furnished every facility for perfecting the work. You have set no limits to my expenses, nor those of the engravers and printers." The public mind was now becoming prepared for the state surveys which have since been effected. North Carolina has the honor of having been the first to send geologists into the field. Professor Olmstead's report upon the economical geology of that state was published in 1825. Since that time, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, Kentucky, Georgia, Arkansas, and Iowa, and perhaps other states and territories, have been explored.

In 1835, the assembly of this state, upon the motion of Charles P. Clinch, a representative from New York, passed a resolution directing the secretary of state to report to the legislature, at its next session, the most expedient method for obtaining a complete geological survey of the state, which should furnish a perfect and scientific account of rocks and soils and their localities, and a list of all its mineralogical, botanical, and zoological productions, and for procuring and preserving specimens of the same, with an estimate of the expense of the undertaking. John A. Dix, secretary of state, in January, 1836, submitted a report in pursuance of this resolution. That luminous and satisfactory document led to the passage of the act of the 15th of April, 1836, in the execution of which, and of the acts of May 8, 1840, and of April 9, 1842, the survey has been made.* William L. Marcy, governor, arranged the plan of the survey in the summer of 1836, and assigned its departments as follows: The zoological department to James E. De Kay; the botanical department to John Torrey; the mineralogical and chemical department to Lewis C. Beck; the geological department to William W. Mather, Ebenezer Emmons, Timothy A. Conrad, and Lardner Vanuxem. This arrangement was subsequently altered by the institution of a palæontological department, under the care of Mr. Conrad, and by the appointment of James Hall to supply his place as a geologist. The results of the survey appear in thirteen large quarto volumes, and in eight several collections of specimens of the animals, plants, soils, minerals, rocks, and fossils, found within the state, one of which collections constitutes a museum of natural history at the capital of the state, and the others are distributed among its collegiate institutions.

It can not be necessary to dwell upon the benefits secured by the survey. It is not more necessary to know what resources are withheld from us than to understand those which Providence has been pleased to bestow. In regard to the narrow purpose in which the survey originated, it is no unprofitable result to know that coal can not be found within the state, and that we must depend for supplies of that mineral on trade with the countries with which we are connected. The want of coal, however, is

It may be stated with just pride, that the law of 1836, appropriating the sum of $104,000 to the survey, was passed by the assembly unanimously. A further appropriation of $26,000 was made by the law of 1842.

compensated by the discovery of rich deposites of salt, lime, marl, peat, and gypsum, and of plumbago, copper, zinc, lead, and iron. The field within which economical science has recently pursued its investigations, with results so well calculated to exalt our sentiments of wonder, gratitude, and devout veneration, and so propitious to the future welfare and happiness of our race, is greatly enlarged, and many obstructions to those investigations are removed. Although, thus far, the survey has resulted only in adding accumulations to the mass of facts already acquired, yet even that is no unworthy contribution to human knowledge; and it may be hoped that a spirit of inquiry has been stimulated, which will not rest content until that philosophical classification of facts shall be made, which is necessary to enable us to read with accuracy the imperishable pages on which the physical history of the earth is written. What new light the discoveries thus to be made in cosmogony will throw upon the designs of the Creator and the destiny of our race, can not now be conjectured; but it is enough to stimulate and reward our highest efforts, to know that the human mind is perpetually active, while the range of research is infinite.

NOTE.

A history of our state would be far from complete without some reference to its Penitentiary System. Therefore, the following account of its origin and progress, prepared by Hon. JOHN L. O'SULLIVAN, is here introduced. It was originally furnished for the Introduction to "The Natural History of the State of New York," and appears in that work as a note to Governor Seward's Introduction.-ED. THE Penitentiary System of New York, as it has now existed for a period of nearly a quarter of a century, is a subject of the highest interest to the stranger, and of pride to our own citizens. The two great establishments in which it is to be seen in operation, on a larger scale than in any of the other states of the Union, are situated at the villages of Auburn and Sing-Sing; the former for the reception of convicts from the western, the latter from the eastern district of the state. The Mount-Pleasant prison, at Sing-Sing, on the Hudson, about thirty-three miles north of the city of New York, has also a separate building for the reception of female convicts from the whole state. The former of these establishments, at the village of Auburn, in the county of Cayuga, one hundred and sixty-nine miles west of Albany, was the first in the Union in which the peculiar system now prevailing in both was adopted, or at least carried out to that degree of completeness and efficiency, which has become the just subject of the admiration of the civilized world. It has, therefore, given its name to the system, notwithstanding that its leading features were by no means novel to the science of prison discipline, or original with the founder of this institution. It has constituted the model from which most of the other states of the Union have derived the plans of the penitentiaries which most of them have, of late years, been led to establish, under the stimulus of an example so successful in itself and so honorable in the eyes of the world; and in the vehement controversy which has been waged, through many modes of publication, between the respective partisans of this system and of the rival system in operation in the state of Pennsylvania, it is always and everywhere designated as the Auburn system. A brief sketch of its origin, as well as of its present condition, will not be deemed misplaced.

Previously to the year 1786, the different states of this Union were governed, in the main, by the sanguinary criminal code which all as colonies had inherited from their mother-country. In that year, Pennsylvania, in which had been more widely sown than in any other the seeds of that philanthropic wisdom which so peculiarly marked the character of its immortal founder, as well as of the religious communion of which he was an ornament, was the first to lead the way to her sister-republics in the direction of reform in criminal law and penal discipline. A new criminal code was created, the most interesting feature of which was the abolition of the former barbarism of capital punishment for all offences short of the highest felonies-treason, murder, rape, and arson. In a few years, under the auspices of such intellects and such hearts as those of a Benjamin Franklin, a Benjamin Rush, a William Bradford, and a Caleb

Lowndes, a still further amelioration took place. The year 1790 was marked by important mitigations of the former corporeal severities inflicted; and in 1794, the penalty of death was restricted to the single crime of murder in the first degree. The first penitentiary erected in the state was the Walnut-street prison in Philadelphia, in the year 1790; in which imprisonment at hard labor was substituted for the ancient modes of punishment for crime by the gallows, the lash, and the brand. A certain degree of classification was adopted for prisoners, according to their offences and characters; while solitary cells were provided for those who, for the more heinous grades of crime, were condemned to that penalty, as also for those whose violent resistance to the ordinary discipline of the prison required unusual means of restraint or punishment. The solitary cells were without the provision of labor, which in the other portions of the establishment was designed to afford one of the chief reformatory influences.

New York was not slow to follow in the track of a more enlightened penal policy, in which Pennsylvania thus bore off the honor of leading the way. The year 1796 marks the first prominent era in the history of penitentiary reform in this state. In his first message to the legislature, on the 6th January, Governor Jay recommended the mitigation of the criminal code, and the erection of establishments for the employment and reformation of criminals. Two years previously, two citizens of New York, distinguished for their humanity and liberality-Thomas Eddy, of the Society of Friends, and General Schuyler, alike in peace and in war one of the most illustrious of the founders of this commonwealth-had visited the Philadelphia prison, for the purpose of acquiring a more accurate knowledge of its tendency, structure, and its internal arrangements; and so favorable was the impression produced on their minds, that the latter gentleman, who was then in the senate of the state, immediately draughted a law for the erection of a penitentiary in the city of New York. This bill, "for making alterations in the criminal law of this state, and the erecting of stateprisons," in harmony with the recommendation of the governor, was brought forward in the senate, and ably and successfully sustained by Ambrose Spencer, the subsequent eminent chiefjustice of the state, and finally became a law on the 26th of March, 1796. This law directed the establishment of two stateprisons, the one at Albany and the other at New York; though the idea of the former was afterward abandoned, and the whole appropriation expended in New York, under a commission consisting of Matthew Clarkson, John Murray, jr., John Watt, Thomas Eddy, and Isaac Stoutenburgh. This establishment (known as "Newgate") was opened for the reception of its inmates on the 25th of November, 1797. The building was 204 feet in length, a wing projecting from each end, and from those wings two other smaller wings. The whole structure was of the Doric order, containing 54 rooms, 12 feet by 18; besides the cells for solitary confinement, on the ground-floor. Criminals sentenced to imprisonment had heretofore been simply confined in the jails of the counties in which they were convicted. The law of 1796 effected at the same time an important amelioration in our criminal code. Previously to that period there were no less than sixteen species of crime punishable with death. Corporeal punishment was used, and in many cases felonies which were not capital on their first, became so on their second commission. In fourteen of these offences, imprisonment for life, or for shorter periods, was substituted for the capital penalty, which was only retained for treason and murder. The model afforded by the Philadelphia and New York prisons was soon successively imitated by other states. The stateprison at Richmond, Virginia, was erected in 1800; that at Windsor, Vermont, in 1808; at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1811; at Concord, New Hampshire, in 1812; and at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1816.