EEPORT ON NATIONAL MUSEUM. 159 



to 1871, he was engaged in business pursuits in Boston, but returned to 

 graduate with the class of 1812, four years later tuan would otherwise 

 have been the case. The first year after liis graduation he was private 

 assistant to Prof, S. W. Johnson in the chemical laboratory, subse- 

 quently until 1880 assistant and instructor in mineralogy and blow-pipe 

 analysis in the Sheffield Scientific School. The summer of 1878 he de- 

 voted to the study of microscopic lithology in Breslau, under Prof. A. 

 Lasaulx, and from March, 1879, to June, 1880, was studying mineralogy 

 and crystallography at Bonn with Professor vom Eath, and lithology 

 with Professor Rosenbusch at Heidelberg. He received the degree of 

 doctor of philosophy from the University of Heidelberg in 1880. 



In the fall of 1880, he accepted the position of curator of the Depart- 

 ment of Economic Geology in the National Museum, and about the same 

 time was api^ointed special agent of the Tenth Census in charge of the 

 building-stone investigation. His strength was too heavily taxed by 

 close study in the hot summer of 1881, and in the fall he found himself 

 unable to continue his work. A month at the Warm Springs in Vir- 

 ginia failed to restore his vigor, and on his return it was ascertained 

 that incii:)ient lung trouble existed. He decided to spend the winter in 

 the Bermudas, hoping that the mild air of a southern ocean would 

 restore him to health. On his return in May it was evident to us all 

 that his days of life were few, and as we bade him good bye, when he 

 set forth for Colorado, we could scarcely hope to see him again. 



In the early part of his student life he paid much attention to bio- 

 logical studies, and in the summer of 1872 was one of the party accom- 

 panying the United States Fish Commission at its summer station at 

 Eastport, Me. Later he became an enthusiastic botanist and published 

 a most admirable work upon the flora of New Haven and vicinity. 

 After finally selecting a specialty he devoted himself to it with untiring 

 zeal, and at the time of his death had placed himself in the front rank 

 of American mineralogists and lithologists. His future was rich in 

 promise. He regarded his life work as just begun, and his chief regret, 

 as he often expressed it to me, was that he had to leave a task which 

 he had for so many years been laying out and preparing himself for. 

 "His death," remarks Dr. Eosenbusch in the Neues Jalirhuch fur Mm- 

 eralogie, " has deprived science of an enthusiastic and unusually gifted 

 servant." He was possessed of unusual executive ability, and his asso- 

 ciates in the Museum often wondered at the ease with which he organ- 

 ized and conducted his own department. He had published twenty 

 or more memoirs upon mineralogical and lithological topics, promi- 

 nent among which are his studies upon contact zones in the Albany 

 granites, and the Mesozoic diabase of Connecticut. His largest work was 

 the Mineralogy and Lithology of New Hampshire, constituting volume 

 IV of the Eeports of the State Geologist. He regarded the investiga- 

 tion of the building stones of the United States, which he had just taken 

 in hand, as the great work of his life, and had laid out an extremely 



