WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 431 



above was published under the name of "William B. Rogers only. It 

 was based on the observed positions of more than fifty thermal springs 

 in the Appalachian belt, occurring in an area of about fifteen thousand 

 square miles, which were shown to issue from anticlinal axes and faults, 

 or fi'om poiiUs veiy near such lines ; and in connection with these 

 springs it was further shown that there was a great preponderance of 

 nitroiren in the gases which the waters held in solution. 



It must be remembered that, during the time when this ofeolosical 

 work was accomplished. Professor Rogers was an active teacher in the 

 University of Virginia, giving through a large i)art of the year almost 

 daily lectures either on physics or geology. Those who met him in 

 his after life in various relations in Boston, and were often charmed by 

 his wonderful power of scientific exposition, can readily understand the 

 effect he must have produced, when in the prime of manhood, upon the 

 enthusiastic youths who were brought under his influence. His lec- 

 ture-room was always thronged. As one of his former students writes, 

 " All the aisles would be filled, and even the windows crowded from 

 the outside. In one instance I remember the ci'owd had assembled 

 long before the hour named for the lecture, and so filled the hall that 

 the Professor could only gain admittance through a side entrance lead- 

 ing from the rear of the hall through the apparatus-room. These 

 facts show how he was regarded by the students of the University 

 of Virginia. His manner of presenting the commonest subject in 

 science — clothing his thoughts, as he always did, with a marvellous 

 fluency and clearness of expression and beauty of diction — caused the 

 warmest admiration, and often aroused the excitable nature of South- 

 ern youths to tiie exhibition of enthusiastic demonstrations of appro- 

 bation. Throughout Virginia, and indeed the entire South, his former 

 students are scattered, who even now remird it as one of the highest 

 privileges of their lives to have attended his lectures." 



Such was the impression which Professor Rogers left at the Univer- 

 sity of Virginia, that, when he returned thirty-five years later to aid 

 in the celebration of the semi-centennial, he was met with a perfect 

 ovation. Although the memories of the civil war, which had inter- 

 vened, and Professor Rogers's known sympathies with the Northern 

 cause, might well have damped enthusiasm, yet the {presence of the 

 highly honored teacher was sufficient to rekindle the former admira- 

 tion ; and, in the language of a contemporary Virginia newspaper, 

 " the old students beheld before them the same William B. Rogers 

 who thirty-five years before had held them spellbound in his class of 

 natural philosophy ; and as the great orator warmed up, these men 



