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Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



value. Some of these collections were made by him at great per- 

 sonal risk, the strata in which they were found being only exposed 

 for a few hours at low tide on the margin of the ocean. Working 

 rapidly he and his assistant took up what they could, and then 

 hurried back over the wide beach to the cliffs, to presently see the 

 water from fifty to sixty feet deep rolling over the spot where they 

 had been at labor. The explorers literally snatched their treasures 

 from the hungry jaws of the ocean. In the fields of recent zoology 

 and botany he made extensive collections. His geographical dis- 

 coveries were of great importance. He added immensely to our 

 knowledge of the interior of Patagonia, traversing vast territories 

 upon which civilized man had never before planted foot. He dis- 

 covered mountains and lakes, and traced the course of rivers which 

 had never before been mapped. One of the great mountain ranges 

 by the consent of both the Argentine and Chilean governments 

 bears his name. His decision that the crest of the Patagonian 

 watershed in parts of its course lies far east of the crest of the 

 southern Andean ranges, had an important bearing upon the ques- 

 tion of the boundary line between the Argentine Republic and 

 Chile, and in the arbitration of this question, which has happily 

 been settled without recourse to arms, as was at one time threatened, 

 the discoveries of the young American explorer were brought into 

 prominence in diplomatic circles. 



On February the ist, 1900, Mr. Hatcher accepted the position 

 of Curator of Paleontology and Osteology in the Museum of the 

 Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, where his brother-in-law, Mr. O. 

 A. Peterson, immediately after his return from Patagonia, had been 

 employed as an assistant. Installed in his new station, with the 

 assurance of the unqualified and generous support of the founder of 

 the Institute in all wise efforts to make his work successful, he began 

 to lay out in connection with the Director of the Museum plans to 

 create one of the most important paleontological collections in 

 America. For four summers in succession he carried on explora- 

 tions in the Western States. In 1903 he was associated for a por- 

 tion of the time with Mr. T. W. Stanton of the United States 

 Geological Survey in an effort to ascertain the relative position and 

 geological age of the Judith River beds, which had been for some 

 time the subject of earnest discussion among geologists. His views 



