BULLETIN OF THE SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES OF DENI50N UNIVERSITY. 

 Volume XIII. Article I, January, 1905. 



C L. HERRICK AS A ^lAKER OF SCIENTIFIC MEN/ 



Ordinarily the closing of a life produces little impression. A 

 limited circle of kinfolk and friends mourn deeply, and the im- 

 press of the departed one upon them remains for good or for ill 

 as a character-moulding force. But the circle is small ; those out- 

 side remember that death is appointed for all men and turn tlieir 

 thought from the unwelcome truth and the new illustration of it 

 as quickly as possible. To be sure the death of a man prominent 

 in public life touches many people, but ordinarily it does not 

 touch them deeply. 



A different case presents itself to us tonight ; one has passed 

 away whose ideals were so noble and so completely realized in his 

 living, that a deep and abiding influence has passed into the lives 

 of the large circle with which his work of teaching brought him 

 into contact. With many of the earlier members of this Scientific 

 Association these ties have been very close, and it is eminently 

 fitting that we interrupt its ordinary activities tonight to linger 

 for a little while in thought upon the life and services of its de- 

 parted founder, Clarence Luther Herrick. 



Others are to speak tonight of difl'erent phases of his per- 

 sonality and work ; as a geologist, as a teacher, as a man, as a 

 friend of Denison. I may not be able to avoid encroaching some- 

 what upon the territory indicated by these sweeping titles, and 

 perhaps it is just as well that I should not. These aspects of his 

 life are so important that it may not be amiss if w^e look at them 

 from the different angles of several observers. But I desire to 

 emphasize especially tonight his rare power of influencing young 

 men — and that too without seeming to make any effort to do so 

 — to adopt his own point of view on life and devote themselves, 

 wholly or in part, to that quest of truth which was to him the 

 great thing in life. This seems to me to be the most striking and 



' An address given at a meeting of the Denison Scientific Association,. 

 Sept. 30, 1904, in memory of C. L. Herrick. 



