EBENEZER EMMONS. 249 



bany. He was afterward transferred to the professorship of Ob- 

 stetrics, and remained on the faculty of the Medical College till 

 1852. During this period he used to go to Williamstown each 

 year to deliver the course of lectures belonging to his professor- 

 ship there. His position on the New York survey enabled him 

 to make the valuable present of a suite of the minerals of that 

 State to his alma mater in 1842. One of his Williams College 

 students now himself a venerable though young-hearted pro- 

 fessor well remembers the strong face and beetling brows of 

 Dr. Emmons, and his manner of giving instruction. His dis- 

 position was kindly. Being a non-resident, not much was seen 

 of him by the students ; he would appear at the lecture room, 

 give his lecture, and disappear. There was not much of the 

 pedagogue about him. Students who had a special liking 

 and capacity for his subject profited much from his instruction ; 

 but his enthusiasm in telling the wonders of the rocks carried 

 him along at a rate which left the indifferent student far be- 

 hind. If only a fraction of his class appeared at the lecture, or 

 if he projected a question at Brown and a response came from 

 Jones or Robinson, he seemed not to notice the difference. 

 Williamstown is in the heart of the Berkshire Hills. One of 

 the summits of East Mountain, a neighbouring eminence, is 

 the only place in that region where gneiss crops out, and here 

 Prof. Emmons used to bring his students to display to them as 

 best he could the relations of his much disputed Taconic Sys- 

 tem to the other and then better known geological formations. 

 Very likely only a couple of the class would reach the summit 

 with him, yet he would discourse just as earnestly to these as 

 to the whole party that set out with him. This height, says 

 Prof. Arthur L. Perry, in his Origins in Williamstown, " has 

 been justly designated Mount Emmons, by one who was once 

 a pupil and later a colleague and always an admirer of the 

 distinguished Professor of Natural History in the college, Ebe- 

 nezer Emmons." 



It is related of Prof. Emmons, as illustrating his enthusi- 

 asm, that once when on a journey with President Hopkins, of 

 Williams, and the president's brother, he asked his friends to 

 turn aside with him to visit a certain cave. They consented 

 to the delay, although the brother was on his way to be mar- 

 ried, and waited just within the entrance of the cavern while 

 Emmons penetrated to its inmost depths. After a time they 



