AMERICAN GEOLOGY DECADE OF 1860-1869. 547 



of professor of natural sciences in the New York State Normal School 

 at Albany. Becoming convinced, however, that his gradually chang- 

 ing views on religious matters were such that he 

 sketch of orton. could not conscientiously continue to hold this posi- 

 tion, he resigned it, and accepted the principalship 

 of an academy at Chester, in Orange County, the same State. 



In 1865 he became principal of the preparatory department of 

 Antioch College in Ohio, then professor of natural sciences, and 

 afterwards president of the same institution. 



His active work as a geologist received its first recognition in 1869, 

 when he was appointed Newberry's assistant. In 1873 he was made 

 president of the new Agricultural and Mechanical College, founded 

 under the Morrill act, and also took charge of the chair of geology in 

 the same institution. Under his efficient administration, which lasted 

 until 1881, the institution prospered and tinally developed into the 

 Ohio State University. 



In 1882, after his voluntary retirement from the State University, 

 the geological survey was organized and Orton made State geologist, 

 a position he continued to hold until the time of his death in 1899. 



Orton belonged to the generation beginning work immediately after 

 the civil war and, according to his biographer, always leaned toward 

 the application of the science to the benefit of his fellow men. "He 

 was painstaking and exact in observation, scrupulous in statement, 

 cautious in speculation." He was one of the first to recognize the 

 possibility of the exhaustion of the supply of petroleum and natural 

 gas, and to issue appeals to the people of Ohio, urging care in hus- 

 banding their resources. Hut these were not received in the spirit in 

 which they were offered, and he had the melancholy satisfaction of 

 seeing his forebodings justified by the event. 



By those who knew him Orton will be remembered as always a man 

 of perfect courtesy, dignified, a little stately, and never effusive. His 

 life was full of considerate and helpful kindness —modest and retiring 

 to an unusual degree, and yet one of the few men to whom honors 

 come notwithstanding. In 1891 he suffered from a paralytic stroke 

 which cost him the entire loss of the use of the left hand, yet he con- 

 tinued to teach and to work until almost the last hour of his lite. For 

 eight years he had looked upon death as a thing momentarily to Vie 

 expected. He met it bravely, cheerfully, and fearlessly on October 

 1<», 1899. 



In 1869 the fourth attempt at a systematic geological survey of 

 Indiana was made, the appointment as State geologist going this time 

 to E. T. Cox, heretofore known to geological fame only through his 

 work while assistant to Owen in Kentucky and Arkansas in 1856-1860. 



Annual reports were issued for each of the ten years which marked 

 the life of this survey. Those of 1869 and 1872 were accompanied 



