SKETCH OF PROFESSOR S. S. HALL EM AN. 397 



The teacher found the boys out, and forbade their studying German 

 during school-hours, but allowed them to do so at recess and noon, 

 when he also took a part in the exercise. 



In 1826 Haldeman was taken to Harrisburg, to the classical school 

 of Dr. John Miller Keagy, a " great teacher," who, besides the clas- 

 sical languages, " knew Hebrew, German, and French. He had a taste 

 for the natural sciences, and in the absence of class-books he taught 

 orally in an excellent conversational style." He remained two years 

 at this school, and was then sent to Dickinson College, where his sci- 

 entific tastes were encouraged by Professor Rogers, afterward State 

 geologist. The stereotyped course of study of the college was not 

 consonant with his own views of how his faculties should be trained, 

 and he left the institution after two years, to take the superintendence 

 of his own studies. He became ostensibly engaged with his father in 

 conducting a saw-mill, but spent much of his time in field-studies, and 

 with his books, concerning which he wrote at the time : " I developed 

 a taste for rainy weather and impassable roads ; then I could remain 

 undisturbed in the perusal of my books, a supply of which I kept in a 

 back office, where I retired as soon as the sky looked threatening." In 

 1 833-' 34 he attended the lectures of the medical department of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, but without any design of becoming a 

 physician. In 1835 he was married to Miss Mary A. Hough. Shortly 

 afterward he removed to Chickies, Pennsylvania, to the house which 

 he occupied till the end of his life, and became a silent partner in the 

 iron business conducted by his brothers, Dr. Edwin and Paris Halde- 

 man. In connection with this business he wrote two papers for " Sil- 

 liman's Journal," on " Smelting Iron with Anthracite Coal," and edited, 

 in 1855, a revision of Taylor's " Statistics of Coal." " In his residence 

 at Chickies," says Dr. D. G. Brinton, in his memorial before the Ameri- 

 can Philosophical Society, "books and cabinets accumulated under his 

 laborious hands, only to be scattered again and give place to others 

 when his insatiable appetite for knowledge led him into new fields of 

 investigation. For forty-five years he spent most of his time in his 

 library, where, in his vigorous manhood, he worked sixteen hours a 

 day. For, though he accepted several professorships, and delivered a 

 number of courses of lectures, he did so with reluctance, preferring to 

 be master of his time, and to spend it in the quiet of home." 



He received from Professor Rogers an appointment as assistant on 

 the Geological Survey of New Jersey in 1836, and of Pennsylvania in 

 1S3T. His field of work in Pennsylvania embraced that part of the 

 State lying between the Blue Mountain and the South Mountain, the 

 most important division, geologically, in the State. While engaged 

 upon it he discovered the fossil plant, Scolithus linearis, the most an- 

 cient organic remains found in Pennsylvania, on which he published a 

 monograph in 1840. During this period he also recorded the obser- 

 vations, real discoveries, that the peregrine falcon makes its nest in 



