925.5 262 [October 
James Hall 
T has been given to few men to serve for upwards of sixty years 
on the official staff of a public department in the Old World; 
and probably the late Dr Hall’s sixty-two years of service in the 
Geological Survey of New York State is unique in American annals. 
James Hall was born on the 12th September 1811, at Hingham, 
an old-fashioned New England town near Boston, which claims the 
oldest occupied church in America. Early in the century it was 
little more than a fishing village, and Hall received his scientific 
education in the Rensselaer School at Troy, which has since grown 
into the Troy Polytechnic Institute. He graduated there in 1832, 
when he was appointed assistant professor of chemistry and natural 
science. In 1836 he was transferred to the professorship of geology, 
and in the same year was appointed to one of the posts of assistant 
geologist on the newly established Geological Survey of New York 
State. In the following year he was promoted to the rank of State 
Geologist, and began field work during the same year. From 1838 
until 1843 he was engaged on the survey of the western part of the 
state, and began the study of the recession of the Niagara Falls, to 
which he acted as Lyell’s guide in 1841. In 1843 he wrote his 
last field report, and was appointed the State Palaeontologist. 
Under his supervision systematic fossil collecting was undertaken in 
the rich palaeozoic faunas of New York, resulting in the formation 
of the magnificent collections in the Albany Museum. The faunas 
were described in “The Palaeontology of New York,” of which 
thirteen huge imperial quarto volumes were issued between 1847 
and 1894 at the estimated cost of about a million dollars. In 
addition to writing and editing this great work, Hall contributed a 
long series of reports to the annual volumes of the “ Regents Reports 
of the New York State Musewm,” and a number of other papers in 
the usual scientific serials. In 1848 he was elected a Foreign 
Member of the Geological Society, and ten years later received from 
the same society its Wollaston Medal, of which at his death he 
was the senior recipient by no less than eleven years, while the 
third medallist in seniority was elected twenty-three years later. 
In 1855 he was offered the post of palaeontologist to the Canadian 
Geological Survey, with a promise of the reversion of Sir William 
Logan’s position of Director. He declined the offer, but worked out 
the collection of Canadian graptolites, which were described in a report 
on “ The Graptolites of the Quebec Group,” published in 1865. 
In 1855 Hall accepted the post of State Geologist of Iowa. 
