162 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Of his Brazilian undertaking, Prof. Martin^ says : " In the prime 

 of his early manhood,, vigorous in health, active, persevering, enthusias- 

 tic, with a reputatiuu in science already well recognized, and with a 

 familiar acquaintance with the country that he was now called to serve, 

 Hartt entered on his great career amid the pride and confidence of all 

 who knew him aright. Nor did he fail to sustain his reputation. In 

 the face of many difficulties and perplexities — the jealousies, the ignor- 

 ance, and the wretched mock economy, that wear the brain and waste 

 the time of almost every head of great scientific enterprises — he pur- 

 sued his plans. With his faithful assistants, mainly young men who 

 had been brought forward under his own instruction at Cornell, he 

 explored, collected and wrote, until at last the hand of death stayed his 

 ceaseless activity." 



In 187G Hartt accepted the directorship of the department of 

 geology in the national museum at Eio Janeiro, but other and more press- 

 ing duties compelled him to relinquish it in a short time. The large 

 museum which he founded in the same city will always bear testimony 

 to the greatness of his work in that country. The immense geological 

 and archaeological collections which he brought home with him from all 

 his expeditions except the first, and those sent by him and his assistants 

 while chief of the Commission, were placed mainly in the museum of 

 Cornell university ; while in the Peabody museum of Cambridge the 

 several large collections made by Hartt in the ancient shell heaps and 

 burial mounds of the Indians of Brazil are to be found. " The most 

 important articles in this interesting collection are the two large face 

 urns, the large animal jar, and the several ancient vases and dishes of 

 various . . . elaborately carved patterns."- 



Hartt's work in Brazil is thus summarized by his friend and assist- 

 ant, Mr. Rathbun^ : " Hartt's greatest achievement in Brazil was prob- 

 ably his solution of the structure of the Amazonian valley. It was 

 founded on the best of pala3ontological evidence which proves the 

 existence of an immense palaeozoic basin lying between the metamorphic 

 plateau of Guiana on the north, and that of Central Brazil on the south, 

 and through which flows the river Amazouas. Silurian, Devonian and 

 Carboniferous rocks make up the series in regular succession, and in 

 many localities are highly fossiliferous. He has explained the cliaracter 

 of the isolated cretaceous deposits, mostly discovered by himself, exist- 



' Propcedinf s of the Fifteenth Anniversary of the University of the State of New 

 York. Prof. Daniel S. Martin, Albany, 1H7!). 



^ Report of the Peabody Mnsenm, Caml)ridge, Mass., vol. 1, 1876. 



' The Life and Work of Clias. Fred. Hartt by P. Rathbun. Paper before the 

 Boston .Natural History Society, IHTi). 



