New Brunswick and Nova Scotia: the First Geological Field Trip by a North American College
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The first known geological excursion by a North American college was conducted in 1835. Twenty staff and students belonging to Williams College — a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, USA — explored the geology bordering the Bay of Fundy in northeast Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Led by two young professors of natural history, Ebenezer Emmons and Albert Hopkins, the party made extensive observations around Pasammaquoddy Bay, Saint John, Parrsboro, and Windsor, as well as more widely through the Minas and Cumberland basins. Although partly following in the footsteps of two pioneering Bostonians, Charles Jackson and Francis Alger, who had reconnoitred the region in the late 1820s, the Williams College party nevertheless made several original observations. One of most important was a study of the anatomy and paleoclimatic significance of permineralized plants from Joggins and Grindstone Island undertaken by Emmons. This was only the second study of its kind worldwide and later inspired William Dawson to do similar work. Largely overlooked by historians of geology, the Williams College expedition, which comprised a four-week voyage of about 1800 km, illustrates well the challenges and opportunities of geological field work in the early Nineteenth Century. RÉSUMÉ La première excursion géologique connue d’un collège nord‑américain a été réalisée en 1835. Vingt membres du personnel et étudiants du Collège Williams — collège d’arts libéraux du Massachusetts, Etats-Unis — ont exploré la géologie des bords de la baie de Fundy dans le nord‑est du Maine, au Nouveau‑Brunswick et en Nouvelle‑Écosse. Le groupe dirigé par deux jeunes professeurs d’histoire naturelle, Ebenezer Emmons et Albert Hopkins, a effectué de nombreuses observations dans les environs de la baie de Passamaquoddy, de Saint‑Jean, de Parrsboro et de Windsor, ainsi que dans des secteurs plus étendus à l’intérieur des bassins Minas et Cumberland. Même si le groupe du Collège Williams a en partie suivi les pas de deux pionniers de Boston, Charles Jackson et Francis Alger, qui avaient effectué une reconnaissance de la région vers la fin des années 1820, il a néanmoins fait plusieurs observations originales. L’une des plus importantes a été l’étude de l’anatomie et de l’importance paléoclimatique des végétaux minéralisés de Joggins et de l’île Grindstone réalisée par Emmons. Il s’agissait seulement de la deuxième étude du genre à l’échelle mondiale; elle a ultérieurement inspiré Williams Dawson à exécuter des travaux similaires. Largement négligée par les historiens de géologie, l’expédition du Collège Williams, qui a comporté un voyage de quatre semaines d’environ 1 800 kilomètres, illustre bien les défis et les possibilités qui s’offraient dans le domaine des travaux géologiques sur le terrain au début du 19e siècle. [Traduit par la redaction]
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.030 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".