X20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF PEOFESSOR JAMES HALL. 



THE name of Professor James Hall is inseparably associated with 

 the growth of American geology, the classification of the palaeo- 

 zoic strata of the continent, and the systematization of their paleon- 

 tology. Connected with the New York State Geological Survey since 

 1837, he has been for about forty years, as chief of the paleontological 

 department, engaged in the study of fossil remains. His words are 

 now referred to in illustration of, and his name is cited as authority on, 

 questions connected with the older geological formations of the conti- 

 nent, by the geologists of the world more frequently than those, prob- 

 ably, of any other American in the same field. 



James Hall was born, of English pai'ents, in Hingham, Massachu- 

 setts, on the 12th of September, 1811. He studied natural history, 

 under the direction of Amos Eaton, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic In- 

 stitute in Troy, New York, where he afterward became Professor of 

 Geology. Professor Eaton had already, by his lectures befoi-e the 

 members of the State Legislature and other audiences, and by his in- 

 strumentality in the organization of the Troy Lyceum of Natural His- 

 tory and in the formation of its geological collection, contributed to 

 awaken an interest in the study of the natural history and geology of 

 the State. He had superintended an agricultural and geological sur- 

 vey of Rensselaer and Albany Counties, and had made a survey of 

 the district adjoining the Erie Canal, and published a report upon it. 

 The subject of instituting a complete geological survey of the State 

 was presented before the Legislature in 1834, and the act making pro- 

 vision for the work was passed in 1836. In the organization of the 

 survey the State was divided into four districts, of which Mr. Hall was 

 appointed assistant in the second district, under Professor Ebenezer 

 Emmons, of Williams College. The district included the counties of 

 Warren, Essex, Clinton, Franklin, Hamilton, and St. Lawrence, and 

 afterward Jefferson. At the end of the year, on the appointment of 

 Mr. Conrad, of the third district, to the department of paleontology, 

 and the transfer of Mr, Vanuxen, of the fourth district, to the position 

 he vacated, Mr. Hall was made geologist of the third district, includ- 

 ing the counties of Montgomery, Herkimer, Oneida, Lewis, Oswego, 

 Madison, Onondaga, Cayuga, Wayne, Ontario, Monroe, Orleans, and 

 Livingston. He published annual reports of his work regularly from 

 1838 to 1841, and concluded the series with a final report in 1843, 

 which forms one of the series of works on the natural history of the 

 State published by the Legislature. In this volume he gave a full de- 

 scription of the order and succession of the strata, their mineralogical 

 and lithological characters, and the organic remains contained in them. 

 Concerning the form in which the volumes of the reports are pub- 

 lished. Professor Hall has related an incident that affords a curious 



