564 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



fessorship in Marshall University, Texas. This position he resigned 

 in 1852 to accept an appointment as computer in the 

 sketch of Kerr. Nautical Almanac Office, then located at Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts. While here he entered the Lawrence 

 Scientific School and studied under Agassiz, Gray, and the. chemist 

 Horsford. 



In 1857 he accepted a professorship at Davidson College in North 

 Carolina, where he remained until 1865, though his active work ceased 

 in 1862, owing to a falling off in income and students, incident to the 

 civil war. From the latter part of 1862 to early in 1864 he was chemist 

 and superintendent of the Mecklenburg Salt Works, near Charleston, 

 South Carolina, but after the destruction of the works, returned to 

 North Carolina, where he became nominally State geologist in 1864, 



though active work, owing to the confusion 

 and disorganization of war, did not begin 

 until 1866. 



It is safe to say that few men ever entered 

 upon the work of a geological survey under 

 more unfavorable auspices. He himself 

 had had no extended experience, nor was 

 he a trained specialist. Little money was 

 available, the industries of the State para- 

 lyzed, and her social conditions disorgan- 

 ized, if not demoralized. The State had 

 never a more genuine and sagaciously pub- 

 lic-spirited citizen than he, but the times 

 were evil, and for several years Professor 

 Kerr shared the fate of all public officials 

 who were endeavoring to adjust, to reconcile, and to go forward. His 

 motives were misrepresented, his character assailed, his abilities ques- 

 tioned, his work maligned. Yet in the face of all this, without good 

 maps and with few roads, a great work was accomplished. 



During one of the first years of the survey he traveled, mainly on 

 horseback, 1,700 miles over mountainous country, with and without 

 roads, and during the season of 1866 and 1867 not less than 4,000 

 miles. Work thus performed was from necessity largely in the nature 

 of reconnaissance. The subjects of drainage and topography received 

 a large share of attention, and. indeed a large part of his work was 

 along physiographic lines, though by no means limited thereto. Agri- 

 cultural and mineral resources were investigated and, so far as pos- 

 sible with the limited means at his command, advertised. His papers 

 which attracted the most widespread attention were doubtless those 

 relating to the action of frost on superficial materials and the unequal 

 erosion of the banks of a stream, due to the earth's rotation. 



Fig. 89. — Washington Caruthers 

 Kerr. 



