CHAPTER XXin 



MINE PROSPECTING AND OTHER EXPERIENCES 

 1881-1891 



AFTER Mr. Shaler's trip to Europe in 1881, the years that fol- 

 lowed, mostly spent in teaching and administrative work, offer 

 few external incidents for the biographer. The monotony of 

 his college duties, it is true, was often interrupted (that is, his 

 lectures were anticipated, or " packed " together, as he phrased 

 it, not "cut") by journeys, many of them undertaken, as we 

 have seen from his letters, in the interest of various mining and 

 other projects. During these times of travel he saw much and 

 overcame much, and if his experiences could have been told by 

 himself they would have added greatly to the interest of this 

 record. 



He valued these outside contacts greatly, not on account of 

 the personal advantage that might come to him, but because 

 they kept him in close touch with the world at large and gave 

 opportunities for getting his students well started in business. 

 It pleased him immensely when his "boys" succeeded, as they 

 nearly always did ; and of late years he was still further elated 

 by the steadily increasing recognition, on the part of men of 

 affairs, of the worth of the Lawrence Scientific School training. 

 This was shown by constant applications for young men as 

 civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers, to take charge of 

 mines, and, as one of them stated, to dig coal, to wash gold, to 

 build bridges, and bring water to dry lands. 



Mr. Shaler's own work in connection with mines, water-supply 

 for cities, phosphate-beds, mica-deposits, and so forth, took 

 him from Nova Scotia to Florida, from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific Ocean. One of his chief uses as a mining expert, he was 



