Section IV., 1S99. [ ISS ] Trans. R. S. C. 



Yl.—The Scientific Work of Prof. Chas. Fred. Hartt. 

 By G. U. Hay, Ph.B., M.A. 



(Read May 2.5th, 1899). 



'•' A Canadian by birth and education, an American by residence and 

 adoption, a Brazilian, I may almost say, by the chief labours and dis- 

 coveiies of his riper years, a scientist always and everywhere, — he was 

 no common man, and in his . . . untimely death the science of two 

 continents is called to mourn for one who cannot be replaced."^ 



Such were the words of a friend and co-worker, shortly after the 

 news came from Brazil, twenty years ago, that Prof. Charles Frederick 

 Hartt had fallen a martyr to science. It was indeed felt that science 

 had lost one of its most enthusiastic and devoted workers, at an age, 

 too — he was scarcely thirty-eight years old at the time of his death — 

 when men are but entering on the riper achievements of life. Although 

 the intervening years since Hartt's death have witnessed advances and 

 scientific activity, unprecedented in the history of the United States and 

 Canada, though there are scores of workers in every department of 

 science where before there were but few, and though the narrow popular 

 view of their work twenty years ago has given place to wider and more 

 comprehensive ideas of the relation between science and common life, 

 yet it may not be amiss to turn your attention for a few moments to a 

 Canadian who represented this modern scientific spirit and who crowded 

 into a few well-spent years results that few have been able to accomplish 

 in a much longer period. 



Hartt was not only an investigator himself. He had that rarer 

 power of making others sharers in his own love of science and stimu- 

 lating in them that eagerness for research which has characterized in a 

 marked degree the band of students that gathered around him when 

 he entered upon his duties as professor of Geology in Cornell Univer- 

 sity. " Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since, as a student of 

 geology, I entered the laboratory of this gifted man. A teacher full of 

 youthful enthusiasm, an original worker glowing with scientific zeal, a 

 friend full of sympathy and love — this, my first impression, years have 

 not dimmed. To study in his presence was indeed a pleasure, and, as 

 the days and weeks sped by, my respect and admiration for him knew 

 no bounds. To his students he was an ideal teacher whose word of 

 commendation brought redoubled efforts to please."- 



1 Professor Daniel S. Martin ; Proceedings of the Fifteenth Anniversary of the 

 Convocation of the State of New York, Albany, 1879. 



2 Professor Frederick W. Simonds, Chair of Geology, State University, Austin, 

 Texas. The " American Geologist," February, 1897. 



