the eurypterid fauna which was to become world renowned.[1] In his report on this region he says: "The gray, compact dolomite of Rootziküll, on the west coast of Oesel, reveals the thin membraneous tests of Eurypterus remipes Dekay [= E. fischeri Eichwald] entirely unchanged, not only in their chemical composition, as pure chitin, like that found in the shells of living Crustacea, but also in their whole internal microscopic structure and preserved with their original brown color peculiar to living animals" (Schrenk, 254, 35).
In the following year, 1853, Eichwald apparently not knowing of Schrenk's discoveries visited the same provinces and islands and on Oesel two versts from Rootziküll in the village of Wita he, too, came upon the eurypterid horizon whose assemblage of organisms surprised him not a little, for he says: "I was astonished to find a vast multitude of Eurypterus remipes [E. fischeri (Eichwald)] in this limestone" (Eichwald, 57, 40). By his collections he added much to the knowledge of the rest of the fauna, but I shall not at this point give the species which he found, since later workers added materially to the faunal lists. During that same summer Schmidt and Harder accompanied Eichwald to Wita and other nearby localities where eurypterids were found; in 1856 Schmidt returned again to Oesel and the following year Niezkowski, Schmidt and Czekanowski made large collections at the best localities. Again in 1858 Schmidt revisited the island, and as the result of these extensive collections and field studies several important papers were brought out. By far the most complete and comprehensive were those by Schmidt, the first published in 1858 entitled "Untersuchungen ueber die Silurische Formation von Ehstland, Nord-Livland, and Oesel"[2] embodies the first detailed stratigraphic and palaeontologic discussion of these regions. Schmidt gave the first geologic map of the region and the zonal subdivision of the "Silurian" which is still used in the east Baltic provinces. In the following year Schmidt published a short notice on some further discoveries in Oesel (243). His most important paper on this island appeared a number of years later in 1883 as one of the "Miscellania Silurica" in the Memoires de l'Academie Imperiale des Sciences de Saint-Petersbourg, entitled "Die Crustaceenfauna der Eurypteren-
- ↑ He had been led to look for this fauna because he had noticed in the Dorpat Museum certain fine specimens which had been sent in from Arensburg, southeast Oesel, by Oberlehrer Werner, who had knocked them out of loose blocks of building stone. (Nieszkowski, 197, p. 303.)
- ↑ It is true that pioneer work on the mainland had been done by M. v. Engelhardt and E. Ulprecht, the results being embodied in a paper entitled "Umrisz der Felsstructur Ehstlands und Livlands" in Karsten's Archiv für Min. Geogn. Bergbau u. Hüttenk. for 1830, but the paper does not touch on Oesel. Similarly in the Geology of Russia by Murchison, de Verneuil and Keyserling Oesel is passed over in a few sentences.
