12

Thence we passed southward through Bell comity, and back to Austin about the middle of May. Soon after I went through a portion of Burnet and Llano counties. At the request of Gov. Throckmorton, I prepared a report of what I had done under his administration. This was left in the hands of the reconstructionists and never published. Its most important matter is in the present report. Under military rule the survey was suspended.

In 1870 a notice of Texas geology, by A. H. Roesler, appeared in some of the Texas newspapers, copied from. ail European journal, where it had first been published. On reading this, I found that a large portion of it had been taken almost verbatim from my report of 1866. I published a notice of said article, stating that it was a very remarkable confirmation of tile accuracy of my report, the measurements of the section of Comanche Peak and of the iron hill of Llano county being exactly alike in every figure; also the fossils at Comanche Peak were the same, without any addition or dimunition. This Might lead some to think that one or the other of the publications was a plagiarism.

Roesler replied, admitting the similarity of the two publications, also stating that instead of his having used my report, that he had never read it, and further, that his publication had been made in the Vienna Journal at Austria, in Europe, in 1859. Here we joined issue. I immediately wrote to Pro,. Cope, Corresponding Secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, requesting him to examine the volumes of the Vienna Journal in their library and ascertain the date of Roesler's publication. He did so, and found it to be either 1868 or 1869, (I have forgotten which), instead of 1859. This placed Roesler in a very unpleasant and dishonorable position.

It is due to the intelligence of the people of Texas to state that Mr. Roesler has never been employed by the State authorities as a geologist, nor has he ever added any thing of importance to the geological knowledge of the State. While employed as draftsman of the survey, he was never supposed to understand geology in the least, nor was he ever requested to make independent geological examinations. Knowing hat this Roesler has caused the Shumard letter to be republished, let me state that, when he did it, he knew said letter to be false, as I can prove frogs a letter of his (Roesler's) to me when he was in the