[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, 

 Vol. XIX, pp. 338-364, 1878.] 



Sketch of the Life and Scientific Work of Pro- 

 fessor Charles Frederic Hartt, by Richard 

 Rathbun. 



In the death of Professor Charles Frederic Hartt, chief 

 of the Geological Commission of the Empire of Brazil, 

 we recognize one of the saddest losses science has 

 recently suffered. 



Prof. Hartt was just in the prime of life, full of vigor, 

 with a mind already richly stored with the results of 

 more than twenty years of almost constant exploration 

 and investigation. Had he been advanced in years, with 

 his labors nearly completed, although he might have 

 become more endeared to us through longer association 

 and friendship, yet we could then have consoled our- 

 selves with the thought that he had finished the work he 

 laid out for himself. But such was not the case; he left 

 the great work ot his life only just begun. His time was 

 wholly given to the solution of some of the most intri- 

 cate problems in the fields of science and the arts, but 

 only here and there, in his short publications, do we 

 catch glimpses of the inexhaustible store of facts he had 

 accumulated and theories he had devised. 



He was at one time an active member of this Society, 

 and a student at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in 

 Cambridge, and nowhere did he have a larger circle of 

 sympathetic friends, than among his scientific associates at 

 these two institutions, soine of whom were students with 

 him under Prof. Agassiz. To these, and to his co-workers 

 everywhere, it would be needless for me to eulogize his 

 character. He was hard-working, unselfish, and affec- 

 tionate, never overbearing to his inferiors, but ever 



