6o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the scientific method well entitle him to be remembered as one of 

 the most meritorious of American scientific workers. 



Edward Orton was born in Deposit, Delaware County, N. Y., 

 March 9, 1829. He was descended from Thomas Orton, who, born 

 in England in 1613, was one of the fifty-three original settlers and 

 owners of Earmington, Conn., was of the stock from which most of 

 the Ortons in the United States are derived, and represented his 

 town in the General Court in 1784. Another ancestor, a grand- 

 son of Thomas Orton, was one of the original purchasers and set- 

 tlers of Litchfield, Conn., where he owned a square mile of land 

 known as Orton Hill, on the south side of Bantam Lake. Two of 

 the maternal ancestors of the subject of this sketch fought in the 

 colonial wars, and ten Ortons were soldiers in the Revolution. 



Young Edward Orton was taught by his father, the Rev. Samuel 

 G. Orton, D. D., and received further training preparatory for col- 

 lege in the academies of Westfield and Fredonia, IST. Y. He en- 

 tered Hamilton College, whence his father had been graduated in 

 1822, in 1845 as a sophomore, and was graduated in 1848 in a class 

 among the other members of which were the Rev. Dr. Thomas S. 

 Hastings, President of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 

 and the Hon. E. J. Van Alstyne, afterward Mayor of Albany, N. Y., 

 and member of Congress. After his graduation he taught for a 

 number of years in academies at Erie, Pa., Eranklin, 'S. Y., and 

 Chester, IST. Y., and became, in 1856, Professor of Natural Science 

 in the State Normal School at Albany, N. Y. He pursued post- 

 graduate studies in chemistry, botany, and other subjects at the 

 Lawrence Scientific School, with Professors Horsford, Cooke, and 

 Gray as his teachers, and studied theology for a time under Dr. 

 Lyman Beecher, at Lane, and Dr. Edwards A. Park, at Andover 

 Seminaries. While teaching at Chester, N. Y., he was called to 

 Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he took charge of 

 the preparatory department in 1865; was made Professor of Natu- 

 ral History shortly afterward, and was made president of the col- 

 lege in 1872, but retained the office for only one year, at the end 

 of which he went to occupy a similar position in the State Univer- 

 sity at Columbus. 



"When the second Geological Survey of Ohio was undertaken 

 in 1869 under the charge of Prof. J. S. Newberry, Professor Orton 

 was appointed an assistant by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and 

 was continued by reappointment by Governor E. E. Noyes. When 

 Professor Newberry withdrew from the survey in 1881, Professor 

 Orton was appointed State Geologist by Governor Charles Poster, 

 and he was afterward reappointed to the position successively by 

 Governors Hoadley, Eoraker, Campbell, and Bushnell. He re- 



