43 



analyses of the same and prepare the results of his labors for pub- 

 lication under the three following titles, to wit : 



First- -Physical Geography, Scientific Geology and Miner- 

 alogy. 



Second Economical Geology, embracing Botany and Agri- 

 culture. 



Third General Zoology of the State. 



[Session Laws, 1853 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 

 community 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 Sur- 

 vey, in which both delighted and in which both had spent long 

 nights and laborious days, still unfinished. 



At the time of his death, Professor 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 eminent self-taught Naturalist who had devoted his life 

 in a quiet and unpretended way to independent scientific enquiry 

 and the labors of authorship 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 

 M. Brewer, Editor of the Boston Atlas, 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 is one of no 

 ordinary character he has not left his superior in science behind 

 him, in his own State. We have known him long and well, and 

 in speaking 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 unas- 

 suming, diligent and indefatigable in his scientific pursuits, at- 

 tentive to all, whether about him or at a distance, and whether 

 friends or strangers, no man will be more missed, not merely in his 

 immediate circle of family and friends, but in that larger sphere 

 of the lovers of natural science, th in Zadock Thompson. 



