40 



Silliman's "American Journal of Science and Arts," valuable 

 scientific communications, all prepared in the systematic, lucid and 

 condensed manner which imparted so much value to all of his 

 publications. 



In 1845, Governor Slade, appointed Prof. Charles B. Adams 

 State Geologist, who with the approbation of the Governor^ ap- 

 pointed the subject of this memoir one of his assistants in the field 

 labor. Prof. Thompson and the Rev. S. R. Hall, the other as- 

 sistant, visited and explored " more or less thoroughly " about 110 

 townships in one season ; and Professor Thompson was actively 

 engaged in this important scientific labor until the Legislature of 

 Vermont neglected to make an appropriation for a Final Report 

 on the Geology of our State, and thus permitted the materials, 

 manuscripts, books and specimens belonging to the Survey to re- 

 main at Montpelier and Burlington locked up in about fifty boxes. 

 The brief and expressive Report of Professor Thompson address- 

 ed to Governor Coolidge, in October 1849, was published in the 

 appendix of the House Journal for that year and is a sad commen^ 

 tary on the folly of which our State has been guilty in regard to 

 the matter of a Geological Survey. After the suspension of the 

 Geological Survey, Dr. Horace Eaton, Governor of the State in 

 1847, appointed Professor Thompson to carry out the Resolution 

 of the Legislature in relation to international literary and scien- 1 

 tific exchanges ; and in pursuance of his appointment he present^ 

 ed the exchange system in its clearest light so that it commended 

 itself to the approbation of every benevolent mindi" The prepa- 

 ration of the Report of " Proceedings and Instructions," which, by 

 the bye, was beautifully printed in a pamphlet of 80 pages, re- 

 flected great credit upon Mr. Thompson, and upon the State and it 

 is greatly to be deplored that the historical interest which was 

 then awakened throughout the State by the visit of the founder 

 of the system of exchanges and by the labors of such men as 

 Professor Thompson, Hon. Hiland Hall, of Bennington, Henry 

 Stevens, of Barnet, Daniel P. Thompson^ of Montpelier, Prof. 

 James D. Butler, then of Norwich, Vt. and others, should so soon 

 and so thoroughly have subsided and become almost extinct. 



In June 1850, Professor Thompson delivered upon invitation 

 an address at Boston before the Boston Society of Natural History 

 in which he made the announcement that " what he had accomplished 



