THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VL VOL. VI. 



No. I.— JANUARY, 1919. 



OIRIGi-IIsr.A.IL .ARTICLES. 



I. — Eminent Living Geologists. 



Dr. Charles Doollttle Walcott, For. Memb. Geol. Soc. Lond., 

 Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington (D.C.). 

 (WITH A POKTKAIT, PLATE I.) 



DR. CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT acquired a taste for 

 geology and natural history when very young. As a schoolboy 

 he made large collections in the region of his home, and determined 

 to follow a scientific career if possible. 



Descended from New England settlers who emigrated from 

 Shropshire, Dr. Walcott was born in New York Mills, Oneida 

 County, New York (U.S.A.), March 31, 1850. His first American 

 paternal ancestor was Captain Jonathan Walcott, of Salem, 

 Massachusetts, who died in 1699. Of the grandfather of Dr. Walcott, 

 Benjamin Stuart Walcott, a writer says 1 that he "moved from 

 Rhode Island in 1822, and became one of the leading manufacturers 

 of central New York ; he had broad interests in educational matters, 

 was the founder of a professorship at Hamilton College, and was 

 well known as a philanthropist. His son, Charles Doolittle Walcott, 

 was a man of unusual energy, was well established in business, and 

 held an influential and leading place in the community. Dying at 

 the early age of thirty-four, he left a wife and four children, the 

 youngest, two years old, being the subject of this sketch". 



Dr. Walcott's early education was in the public schools of 

 Utica, which he entered in 1858, and in the Utica Academy, which 

 he left in 1868. He then entered a hardware store as a clerk and, 

 continuing in such occupation two years, acquired a practical 

 business training, which has proved of great value to him. 



His scientific tastes were developed at the age of 13, when 

 he became interested in the systematic collecting of fossiJs and 

 minerals. The following winter he met Colonel E. Jewett, geologist, 

 palaeontologist, and conchologist, from whom he borrowed books and 

 received many suggestions. Geological reading and collecting were 

 continued, and for two winters he devoted much time to optics and 

 astronomy, and incidentally made large collections of insects and 

 birds' eggs in the spring and summer months. 



Of this period he says, 2 referring to fossils accidentally opened up 

 by his wagon wheel when driving: "In a small drift block of 



1 Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, vol. lii, No. 4, February, 1898, 

 p.J547. 



2 Evidences of Primitive Life, Smithsonian Report, 1915 (1916), p. 243. 

 DECADE VI. — VOL. VI. — NO. I. 1 



