612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF PROFESSOR 0. C. MARSH. 



By G. B. GEINNELL. 



AMONG the younger workers in science in America, no name stands 

 higher than that of Prof. O. C. Marsh. Enthusiastic, energetic, 

 and capable of an unlimited amount of work, he has already contrib- 

 uted more than any one else to our knowledge of the ancient life of this 

 continent. Many of his discoveries have proved of the greatest interest 

 to the student of biology, and have a direct and highly-significant bear- 

 ing on some of the most important scientific problems of the day. The 

 genealogy of the horse, brought forward by Prof. Huxley in his New 

 York lectures as the demonstrative evidence of evolution, was worked 

 out mainly by Prof. Marsh, and was the result of his vigorous field- 

 work and patient study. 



Prof. Othniel Charles Marsh was born in Lockport, New York, 

 October 29, 1831, and his boyhood was spent mainly in that vicinity. 

 As a boy he was passionately fond of field-sports, and devoted much of 

 his time to fishing and shooting. The writer has heard him remark that 

 he was a sportsman before he was a naturalist ; and it cannot be 

 doubted that the open-air life of his early years gave him the vigorous 

 health he has since enjoyed, while to the habits of observation acquired 

 in the woods and fields much of his subsequent success in science has 

 been due. He is still a keen sportsman, and very hard to beat with 

 rod or gun. In 1852 he entered Phillips Academy at Andover, Massa- 

 chusetts, where he graduated in 1856, the valedictorian of his class. 

 He entered Yale College the same year, and graduated with high 

 honors in the class of 1860. The next two years were spent in the 

 study of chemistry and mineralogy in the Sheffield Scientific School at 

 New Haven. He then went to Europe, and spent three years in the 

 Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Breslau. While in Germany 

 he studied zoology and geology under the eminent teachers Ehrenberg, 

 Rose, Bunsen, Peters, Beyrich, and Roemer. His vacations were de- 

 voted to Alpine explorations and other work in the field, during which 

 he made several discoveries of interest, and published accounts of them 

 in papers read before the Geological Society of Germany. He returned 

 to New Haven in 1866, to fill the chair of Paleontology in Yale College, 

 a position which he now holds. 



During his school-days at Andover, and throughout his college 

 course, Prof. Marsh was a devoted student of mineralogy, and many 

 of his vacations were spent in Nova Scotia, collecting minerals and 

 investigating the geology of that peninsula. It was here that he dis- 

 covered, while yet in college, the two celebrated vertebrae of Eosaurus 

 Acadianus, which still remain unique, and are thought to have been 



