SKETCH OF PROF. WILLIAM B. ROGERS. 607 



ton, Henry Darwin, and Robert Empeie Rogers, all of whom have 

 won celebrity as scientific teachers and investigators, and of whom 

 William and Robert alone survive. 



Their father, Patrick Kerr Rogers, was a man of varied attain- 

 ments, and an enthusiastic student and teacher of natural science, 

 who, besides lecturing to medical classes, w r as among the first in this 

 country to establish systematic courses of instruction in chemistry 

 and experimental physics for the general public. His sons were edu- 

 cated chiefly at home under his immediate care, the elder continuing 

 their studies at William and Mary College, their father having been 

 appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in that 

 institution. 



When twenty-one years of age, William gave his first lectures on 

 science in the Maryland Institute, Baltimore, and the following year 

 was appointed to succeed his father in William and Mary College, 

 where he remained until 1835. He was then appointed to the chair 

 of Natural Philosophy in the University of Virginia, and there ex- 

 tended his instructions by adding the subjects mineralogy and geol- 

 ogy to his course. The same year he organized the geological sur- 

 vey of the State, having, while a professor at William and Mary, 

 begun his geological labors with an examination of the Tertiary 

 region, of which he published, in conjunction wdth his brother, Henry 

 D. Rogers, two memoirs in the " Transactions of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society." At this time, besides other chemical researches, he 

 made an analysis of the waters of the Virginia mineral springs, the 

 results of which have appeared in various publications. 



He remained at the head of the geological survey until it was dis- 

 continued in 1842, having published a series of annual reports and 

 collected further materials, for the completion and publication of 

 which, however, no provision was made by the State. While at the 

 university he published for the use of his students a short treatise on 

 the "Strength of Materials " (Charlottesville, 1838), and a volume 

 on "The Elements of Mechanical Philosophy" (Boston, 1852). Dur- 

 ing this period of his life, besides the cares of his professorship and 

 of the survey, he occupied himself with original researches in various 

 departments of science, partly geological, in connection with his field- 

 work, and, after the survey ended, chiefly in chemistry and physics. 



In 1840 the "Association of American Geologists and Natural- 

 ists " was organized. In this society, embracing Hitchcock, Hale, 

 Vanuxem, the four brothers Rogers, Conrad, Emmons, and others, 

 engaged in active scientific research, Prof. Rogers took a leading part, 

 as will be seen by referring to the volume of its " Transactions " 

 (1840-'42), to which he contributed among other articles the following 

 memoirs : " On the Age of the Coal-Rocks of Eastern Virginia ; " 

 " On the Connection of Thermal Springs with Anticlinal Axes and 

 Faults;" "Observations of Subterranean Temperature in the Coal- 



