10 



His first report appears in the Canadian Geological Survey 

 report for 1847. It and those which followed till 1852 were 

 devoted chiefly to the record of his examinations of the min- 

 eral waters of Canada. From the analytical results thus 

 obtained he drew generalizations which inevitably led him 

 into the field of geological chemistry. His subsequent 

 official studies among the limestones, dolomites and gyp- 

 sums, and later on among the granites and gneisses of the 

 crystalline rocks, supplemented his earlier speculations on the 

 agency of water as a rock-forming and transforming medium, 

 and opened up those wide vistas of research and speculation 

 which he followed, till they led him to the clear conception 

 of his crenitic theory. His official reports contained the facts 

 which were of interest to the public, but those same facts, 

 with the theoretical deductions he drew from them, he 

 embodied in articles, which were contributed to the journal 

 of his old friends, the Sillimans, and were in many cases 

 widely reproduced in Europe. But in addition to articles 

 suggested by his purely professional work, he had hardly 

 been domiciled in his room, which opened off the laboratory 

 of the Survey, when he inaugurated his career of indepen- 

 dent thought and original investigation in theoretical chem- 

 istry by a " Review of the Organic Chemistry of Mr. 

 Charles Gerhardt," and by a paper " On the Anomalies 

 presented in the Atomic Value of Sulphur and Nitrogen, 

 with Remarks on Chemical Classification, and a Notice of 

 Mr. Laurent's Theory of Binary Molecules.'' These were 

 followed in 1849 by a paper " On Some Principles to be Con- 

 sidered in Chemical Classification." 



The Bibliography (appended) shows how even at this early 

 period of his scientific career Hunt not only combined the 

 routine work of his profession as a chemist with theoretical 

 speculations, but elevated the drudgery of the laboratory into 

 work of highest scientific interest, by drawing far-reaching 

 conclusions from every series of determinations which his 

 duties required him to make. His analysis of the saline 

 springs of Canada, its soils, rocks and minerals, undertaken 



