264 NATURAL SCIENCE [October 1898 
is one of the most valuable contributions to these forms of 
Arthropods. And Hall not only described fossils systematically ; 
he carefully studied their anatomy and the microscopic structure of 
their tissues, a work in which the magnificent preservation of the 
North American palaeozoic fossils gave him exceptional oppor- 
tunities. 
In 1872 Hall visited England to attend the meeting of the 
British Association at Brighton, and read a paper “On the Clinton, 
Niagara, and Upper Helderberg Formations in the United States.” 
Four years later he helped to found the International Congress of 
Geologists, an institution in which he always took a keen interest. 
In fact only last year, in spite of his 86 years of age, he visited 
Russia to attend the last meeting of the Congress and subsequently 
accompanied it in a fatiguing excursion through the Ural Mountains. 
In 1884 Hall was elected a corresponding member of the Paris 
Academy of Sciences. 
During the last few years of his life Hall was greatly worried by 
the friction with the literary departments of the New York State 
service with which his own was associated. Originally the 
scientific departments were under the control of the library and 
literary branches of the service, which regarded the great cost of the 
scientific departments with disfavour. At length in 1893 Hall 
succeeded in getting a bill through the New York legislature, which 
secured his freedom from literary control. An attack was then 
made on his private character. Mr Melvil Dewey, the state libra- 
rian, charged Hall with having sold for 65,000 dollars a collection 
of fossils which he said were really the property of the State. A — 
legislative committee investigated the charges, Dr Hall was triumph- 
antly acquitted, and the New York Geological Survey has continued 
its work in peace. 
Hall’s indomitable energy, unfailing courtesy and bright good 
humour rendered him an universal favourite in American scientific 
circles. His humour was keen, and though sometimes cynical, never 
marred by any suspicion of unkindness. For example, his wife was 
a Roman Catholic and had at one time converted Hall to her views, 
Hall used to attribute his abandonment of Romanism to the breaking 
of a pulley chain, whereby there were simultaneously smashed to 
shivers one of his favourite fossils and his faith in providence. 
After this Hall’s relations with his wife were not so sympathetic ; 
for she appeared a little jealous of his devotion to his scientific work. 
So he built a house for his wife in his park, and they lived together 
for years on terms of friendly neighbourship. She died some years 
ago, and Hall keenly felt her loss. He himself passed away rather 
suddenly on August 7th, at a quiet resort in the White Mountains, 
where he had gone for his usual summer’s rest. 
