THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 823 



only a sliort time before, to the great regret of many wlio had hoped 

 to see and hear him there. 



At the first meeting Professor Hitchcock laid before his co- 

 laborers in geology an account, with specimens, of the fossil foot- 

 prints of the Connecticut Valley sandstone, which have since become 

 so celebrated and so closely connected with his name. The next year 

 the meeting was again held in Philadelphia, and the third year in 

 Boston. On that occasion (1842) the brothers Rogers — Henry Dar- 

 win and William Barton — presented to the body their immortal 

 achievement, wrought out together over a vast field, of the structure 

 of the Appalachian mountain system. Both were then young men, 

 but little over thirty, and had labored with true brotherly as well 

 as scientific co-operation, Henry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania 

 and AVilliam in Virginia. A most interesting account of their joint 

 presentation of this memorable investigation was given in a letter 

 from one who was present at the time, Mr. John L. Hayes, and printed 

 in the memorial volume. Life and Letters of William B. Rogers, by 

 his widow, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. After referring to 

 the eminent men present — Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, presiding, 

 already becoming noted in the young science of anthropology, and 

 the brilliant address of Professor Silliman, of New Haven, and others 

 active in various departments of science: Hitchcock, Jackson, 

 Emmons, of Taconic fame, " the brilliant French astronomer 

 Nicollet, the mineralogist Beck, the paleontologist Hall, the micros- 

 copist Bailey, the zoologist Gould, the philologist as well as natural- 

 ist Haldeman," and others, among them Mr. (afterward Sir) Charles 

 Lyell, of England — he goes on to give the first place of interest and 

 importance to the work of the brothers Rogers, and after describing 

 it enthusiastically closes with the following words : " The brothers 

 by their happy and amiable faculty of working in concert, more than 

 duplicated their individual power. In making their joint exposition, 

 AVilliam Rogers took upon himself the more modest but really more 

 difficult part of describing the phenomena, leaving to his brother the 

 part of explaining the theory. ... Nothing could be more pleasing 

 than the working together of these minds toward the same end." 



It will be apparent to any one from these accounts of those early 

 meetings, both their topics and their 'personnel, that there was not 

 only ample scope for such an organization, and both need and readi- 

 ness for it, but that it had in it from the first the germs of a wider as- 

 sociation that should take in all departments of science, and give simi- 

 lar opportunities to all the scattered workers and students of the land. 

 This fact soon became evident, and the idea was taken up earnestly 

 by the Rogers brothers and actively pressed to its accomplishment. 

 Henry D. Rogers was more prominent in the first stages of the move- 



