OBITUARIES. 



OTHNIEL CHAKLES MARSH. 

 Born October 29, 1831 ; Died March 18, 1899. 



The death of Professor Marsh, of Yale, removes the last of the small band 

 of pioneers in Vertebrate Palaeontology in North America. The Far West 

 was becoming ready for scientific exploration at the time when he had completed 

 an unusually extended college career, and his ample wealth enabled him to 

 avail himself fully of his opportunities. He thus organised and led a series of 

 expeditions which met with so much success in discovering the skeletons of 

 extinct vertebrate animals, that the name of Marsh soon became a household 

 word in connection with the recovery of wonderful lost creations. He died in 

 the midst of work after only a week's illness, an attack of pneumonia proving 

 fatal to his already enfeebled constitution. 



Othniel Charles Marsh was born at Lockport, New York State, in 1831, 

 and eventually entered Yale College, where he graduated in 1860. He remained 

 for two more years engaged in geological and mineralogical studies, in the 

 Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, and thence proceeded to Germany. He 

 studied under Ehrenberg, Beyrich, Gegenbaur, Ferdinand Roemer, and others, 

 in the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Breslau. He returned to America 

 in 1866, and became Professor of Palaeontology in Yale College, filling this 

 honorary position, which was specially created for him, until the time of his 

 lamented death. 



Professor Marsh never lectured or gave systematic instruction in the college, 

 but was able to devote the whole of his time, energy, and resources to the 

 foundation of a Museum of Palaeontology and original researches connected 

 therewith. He was a nephew of George Peabody, whom he induced to present 

 to Yale a large sum of money for the foundation of the Peabody Museum of 

 Natural History. One of the wings of this great institution was erected at 

 once and became the scene of Professor Marsh's work ; the remainder has still 

 to be built. 



Until Marsh proceeded to the German universities, his chief interest centred 

 in mineralogy, and his first paper, published in 1861, referred to the occurrence 

 of gold in Nova Scotia. He wrote several other notes on minerals, and 

 contributed to the fifth edition of Dana's "Mineralogy" in 1868. His studies 

 in Germany, however, led him to direct special attention to palaeontology and 

 comparative anatomy ; and he began the series of researches by which he is 

 now best known. He first published a short description of two Labyrinthodont 

 vertebrae from the Coal-Measures of Nova Scotia, assigning them to a new 

 Ichthyosaurian Reptile (Eosaurus acadianus). He then contributed a series of 

 notes, chiefly on invertebrate fossils, to the German Geological Society in 1864 

 and 1865. His first paper on fossil vertebrata from the West was a " Notice of 

 a new and diminutive species of fossil Horse (Uquus parvulus) from the Tertiary 

 of Nebraska," published in the American Journal of Science in 1868. 



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