SKETCH OF THOMAS EGLESTON. 259 



new site on the Morningside Heights, where now the School of Mines 

 is installed in stately fireproof structures, wherein its great accumu- 

 lated treasures of collections, apparatus, models, and varied appli- 

 ances of instruction are safely and permanently housed. 



The influence of this school upon science in New York city has 

 been incalculable. Only those who have lived in touch with the 

 scientific life of the metropolis during the period since the close of 

 the civil war can appreciate the change that has taken place in pub- 

 lic feeling regarding science, or can recognize how largely that change 

 is due to the existence of such an institution, and to the presence 

 of such a body of strong and able professors, in constant and active 

 co-operation in the interest of science. The school attracted notice 

 from the first, abroad as well as throughout this country. In 1871, 

 seven years from its opening, a writer in the E^orth American Review 

 characterized it as " already more scientific than Freiberg, more 

 practical than Paris," and emphasized its influence both upon science 

 and upon mining interests in the United States, pointing out that 

 the literature pertaining to mines and their working had been very 

 limited in the English language, and that the instruction in the 

 school had to be chiefly given by lectures; but that these courses 

 would gradually develop into a literature. 



These suggestions have been fully justified by the results of the 

 last quarter century. The vast development of our mineral re- 

 sources has been largely under the direction of graduates of this 

 school. Hundreds of them are to-day in important positions of sci- 

 entific trust, not only throughout our own country but in South and 

 Central America, Australia, China, Japan, and even Europe itself. 

 The lectures of the professors, and the articles constantly published 

 in the School of Mines Quarterly, have indeed given us a literature 

 of the subject in English. The local infiuence in the city has been 

 great, upon scientific education in secondary schools, and upon gen- 

 eral public sentiment; while in Columbia University the experi- 

 ment has become one of its finest departments and an element of 

 its greatest strength. Rarely is it given to a man to see in his life- 

 time so great a result from the plans and the labors of his earlier 

 years. 



Of the many forms of scientific activity which have engaged 

 Professor Egleston during his busy life, only the briefest mention 

 can be made. He was one of the founders of the American Institute 

 of Mining Engineers, was thrice its vice-president, and was chosen 

 president in 1886; and he has published over one hundred articles in 

 its Transactions. He was one of the founders of the American 

 Metrological Society, and of the societies of Mechanical Engineers 

 and of Electrical Engineers, and a member of the society of Civil 



