MEMOIR OF H. C. HOVEY 23 



The well directed ej'es of this little shaver in science had already in tliis 

 single act done a thing which in real service the lifetime of another might 

 hardly equal. But love and comprehension of science was not a thing 

 that in those days, in such an atmosphere, could he safely j)ursued save 

 as an avocation from what was, to that generation, a more serious calling ; 

 and so the growing youth, having passed through the course at Wabash 

 College, graduated in 1853, and as students of that institution were 

 definitely designed for the Church, Mr. Hovey completed the purpose of 

 his training by a course in the liane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati. 



Doctor Hovey was an active clergyman all his life and he was one of 

 the original Fellows of the Geological Society. He never pretended, 

 however, to be a professional geologist, even though he became expert and, 

 among us, final in experience and judgment in that phase of the science 

 now designated by the unlovely term speleology. 



His study of caverns was begun in 1854 and was maintained with ever- 

 growing interest for sixty years. His zeal was fearless. The subter- 

 ranean world, with its unknowii mysteries of darkness and labyrinthine 

 mazes, held no fears for him, and he pursued, even at the age of seventy- 

 five, their bewildering ways in newly discovered parts of the Mammoth 

 Cave, through "which the routes were dangerous and difficult enough to 

 have taxed the nerve, the strength, and the agility of a young man. 



His first published account of his explorations was in 1855 and related 

 to the Wyandotte Cave of Indiana. His last contribution to the litera- 

 ture of caves was an exhaustive bibliography of the Mammoth Cave (with 

 Dr. E. Ellsworth Call), which was published in 1914, and came to his 

 hands only a few hours before his death. 



When Doctor Hovey began his labors, cave-hunting was little else than 

 a bizarre and venturesome underground diversion, seemingly impelled 

 by curiosity only, with a distant intangible liope of solving some hidden 

 problem. Today cave exploration is so far an orderly procedure, with 

 definite modes and objectives, as to have won a distinctive name, a dis- 

 tinctive organization, La Societe de Speleologie, and a distinctive organ, 

 Spclinica. In the charm of that far-reaching interest which bears on the 

 jH'iiiiitive history of tlic human race and its contemporaries, the American 

 caverns seem not yet to have a share, l)iit in their pliysical characters 

 ilioir 1)earing on broad problems of drainage, on the cliemistry of solution, 

 and on tlie tectonics of limestone plateaus (the caves to which Doctor 

 Hovey gave his especial attention) they are, in magnitude of area and 

 diversity of effects, hardly to be equaled. To these must be added their 

 M'ondrniiR and im|)rossivc beauty in domes and spii-cs. m crystal mounds 

 and ()palcsc(!iit pools, in glistering spectral icicles ;in(l resonant cnrillons, 



