4 o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



York in 1836 and Professor of Chemistry in the Albany Medical 

 College in 1 838, Dr. Emmons removed in the latter year to Al- 

 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 profess- 

 or we n remembers the strong face and beetling brows of Dr. 

 Emmons, and his manner of giving instruction. His disposition 

 was kindly. Being a non-resident, not much was seen of him by 

 the students ; he would appear at the lecture room, give his lec- 

 ture, and disappear. There was not much of the pedagogue about 

 him. Students who had a special liking and capacity for his sub- 

 ject 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 behind. 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 Robertson, he seemed 

 not to notice the difference. Williamstown is in the heart of the 

 Berkshire Hills. One of the summits of East Mountain, a neigh- 

 boring 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-dis- 

 puted Taconic System to the other and then better known geo- 

 logical formations. Very likely only a couple of the class would 

 reach the summit with him, yet he would discourse just as ear- 

 nestly to these as to the whole party that set out with him. This 

 height, says Prof. Arthur L. Perry, in his Origins in Williams- 

 town, "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, 

 Ebenezer Emmons/' 



It is related of Prof. Emmons, as illustrating his enthusiasm, 

 that once when on a journey with President Hopkins, of Wil- 

 liams, 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 married, and 

 waited just within the entrance of the cavern while Emmons 

 penetrated to its inmost depths. After a time they heard the ex- 

 cited cry, " Pve got it ! I've got it ! " and out rushed the geologist, 

 bearing triumphantly a muddy fragment of rock. He had secured 

 a piece of evidence in support of his Taconic System. 



In 1836 a law was passed providing for a geological survey of 



