378 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Aug. 



quired in the country as in the city, and urging 

 that the study of Natural History should be more 

 generally taught in our common schools and colle- 

 ges, for the obvious reason that such a study 

 "would refine and improve the moral sensibilities 

 of our people, and sharpen and invigorate their in- 

 tellectual powers." 



In such labors, beset with the difficulties so free- 

 ly confessed before the "Solid Men of Boston" on 

 the occasion of the delivery of the last mentioned 

 address, he passed his quiet life. At one time he 

 was a teacher of the exact science ; at another 

 time prosecuting his researches into Natural Histo- 

 ry ; and then he might be found preaching in his 

 modest and reverential manner the sublime doc- 

 trines of the Christian creed which he had adopted, 

 and whether in or out of the pulpit, always seen and 

 known as the industrious, patient, humble and ex- 

 emplary disciple of Him who was born in the man- 

 ger and died on the cross. Prof. Thompson thus 

 won friends, not "in single spies but in battalions," 

 friends who knowing the anxieties he felt to see 

 the wonders of the great exhibition at London, in 

 1851, gladly put into his purse that "material aid," 

 of which teaching and preaching and authorship 

 had not gathered a superabundance. Chiefly 

 through the kindness of friends, which he has beau- 

 tifully acknowledged in one of his books, he was 

 enabled to enjoy a trip to the Old World, "behold- 

 ing the wonders of the great deep, and seeing and 

 admiring the wonderful things of Nature and Art 

 which lie beyond it." After an absence of three 

 months, spending a few weeks in London and Paris 

 and after travelling about 7500 miles, he came 

 back refreshed in spirit and health to his humble 

 dwelHng at Burlington, and after a while yielded 

 to the importunities of his friends, and published a 

 neat volume of 143 pages, entitled a "Journal of a 

 trip to London, Paris, and the Great Exhibition in 

 1851." Although this "Journal" is composed of 

 notes for each day from May until August, jotted 

 down when travelling or sight-seeing, for the pri' 

 vate eye of family and friends, and with no expecta- 

 tion that they would ever be printed ; yet they 

 contain much that is new and valuable, and al- 

 though published as a "thank offering to his 

 friends," yet the reading public have perused it 

 with equal pleasure and profit. 



Since the publication of his History of Vermont 

 in 1842, railroads and magnetic telegraphs have 

 been introduced into the State, and other changes 

 have taken place ; and early in 1853, Prof. TliOMP 

 son published an appendix to the History, chiefly 

 in the department of the Natural History. This 

 appendix, although, containing only 64 pages, is a 

 most valuable supplement to his large work, and if 

 his life had been spared a few years, as he says in 

 the Preface, he might have re-written the whole 

 history. 



We have now arrived in chronological order at 

 his last work upon which the professor was en- 

 gaged when the summons came for him to join the 

 inajority and be gathered to his fathers. It will be 

 remembered that the labors of Prof. Adams and 

 his assistant had ceased in 1847 on behalf of the 

 State. The cold shoulder of "men most noted for 

 '.i'isdom and virtue" was turned towards them, after 

 it was an established fact "that as much labor ivas 

 performed, and as much investigaiioii effected, as 

 were ever accomplished with the same erperiditure in 

 rmjf other Slate." Prof. Adams' final report was 



never made, and January 19th, 1853, he died on 

 the island of St. Thomas, W. I., cut down in the 

 prime of life and usefulness, when all that remained 

 of the geological survey of Vermont was shut up 

 in short hand in the field books of the State Geol- 

 ogist, and his assistants, or locked up in the fifty 

 boxes of unticketed and untrimmed specimens at 

 Burlington and Montpelier. Years after the field 

 work was done, and when Prof. Adams was slum- 

 bering in his grave, the "men most noted for wis- 

 dom and nrtue" discovered that they had made a 

 mistake in arresting the progress of the survey. 

 Then it was that Prof. Zadock Thompson was ap- 

 pointed by statute. State Naturalist, with the follow- 

 ing duties : "To enter upon a thorough prosecution 

 and completion of the Geological Survey of the 

 State, embracing therein full and scientific exami- 

 nation and description of its rocks, soils, metals and 

 minerals ; make careful and complete assays and 

 analyses of the same, and prepare the results of his 

 labors for pubUcation, under the three following 

 titles, to wit : 



1. Physical Geography, Scientific Geology and 

 Mineralogy. 



2. Economical Geology, embracing Botany and 

 Agriculture. 



3. General Zoology of the State." 



Session Laws, \85S, pp. 45, 46. 



He was pursuing the labors of this responsible 

 task which the State had honorably to herself and 

 to him, commissioned him to perform, when death 

 bereaved his family and friends and the commu- 

 nity of a man, who in all things was the type and 

 exemplar of his race. On the same day, three 

 years before, his predecessor went to his long home, 

 both leaving the matter of a geological survey in 

 which both delighted, and in which both had spent 

 long nights and laborious days, still unfinished. 



At the time of his death. Prof. Thompson was a 

 Professor of Natural History in the University of 

 Vermont, an institution to which he had been 

 greatly attached since his graduation in 1823; and 

 the emment self-taught naturalist who had devoted 

 his life in a quiet and unpretending way to inde- 

 pendent scientific inquiry and the labors of author- 

 ship and the ministry, died in his humble dwelling 

 near the University, with his intellectual armor on, 

 ere his "eye had grown dim, or his natural force 

 abated." Dr. Thomas ]\I. Brewer, editor of the 

 Boston Mas, and a naturalist of great research and 

 acquirement, thus alludes in touching language to 

 the death of his valuable friend : 



"His loss, both as a citizen and a public man — 

 he has not left his superior in science behind him, 

 in his own State — is one of no ordinary character. 

 We have known him long and well, and in speak- 

 ing of such a loss, we know not which most to 

 sympathize with, the family from whom has been 

 taken the upright, devoted and kind-hearted head, 

 or that larger family of science, who have lost an 

 honored and most valuable member. Modest and 

 unassuming, diligent and indefatigable in his sci- 

 entific pursuits, attentive to all, whether about him 

 or at a distance, and whether friends or strangers, 

 no man will be more missed, not merely in his im- 

 mediate circle of fam.ily and friends, but in that 

 larger s])here of the lovers of natural science, than 

 Zadock Thompson. 



At any time we should hear of the death of such 

 a man with deep regret and grief, and these feel- 



