Obituary — J. B. Hatcher. 571 



leading geologists in America, in speaking of liim said to the writer, 

 " I regard Professor Hatcher as one of the best informed geologists 

 in the United States. He is pre-eminent in this field, though he sets 

 comparatively small store by his attainments." 



The last five years of his life, during virhich he was connected 

 with the Carnegie Institute, were not only years in which he proved 

 himself remarkably successful as a collector, but in which he- 

 revealed his ability as a scientific author. A number of important 

 papers from his pen have appeared in the Annals and Memoirs of 

 the Carnegie Museum. The first volume of the Eeports of th& 

 Princeton University Expeditions was written by him during this 

 time. He contributed numerous brief articles to various scientific 

 journals, and in 1902 undertook for the United States Geological 

 Survey the completion of the Monograph of the Ceratopsia which 

 had been left unfinished by Professor Marsh at the time of hi& 

 death. The writer believes that this great work had been brought 

 so far that it will be possible to complete it with comparatively 

 small efi^ort on the part of some one reasonably familiar with the 

 subject. Various other important papers of a monographic character 

 had been begun. Unfortunately these for the most part are not 

 in such condition that they can be published. 



One of the great undertakings which had occupied much of his 

 time and thought during the past eighteen months was the repro- 

 duction of the skeleton of DipJodociis carnegiei, a restoration of which 

 had been ordered by Mr. Andrew Carnegie for the purpose of 

 presentation to the British Museum of Natural History, the Trustees 

 of which in February, 1903, had formally signified their acceptance 

 of Mr. Carnegie's kind offer to have such a reproduction made for 

 them. The superintendence of this work was a most congenial labour 

 to him. On the 1st day of July, 1904, a small company of scientific 

 men and women, together with the Trustees of the Carnegie Institute, 

 had the pleasure of a private view of this restoration, which had 

 been temporarily set up prior to its shipment to England. The 

 absence of Professor Hatcher from the little company was feelingly 

 alluded to by many. But none of the party dreamed, although he 

 was known to be seriously ill, that he had reached the end of his 

 life's work. 



Mr. Hatcher's position as a palseontologist was unique. He is 

 universally admitted by those who are most competent to pass 

 judgment to have been the best and most successful paleeontological 

 collector whom America has ever produced. The larger proportion 

 of the choicest vertebrate fossils now in the Peabody Museum at 

 Yale University, in the collection of the United States Geological 

 Survey, in the Museum of Princeton University, and in the Museum 

 of the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh were collected by him. To 

 a very large extent the American methods of collecting such 

 remains, which are now universally admitted to be the best 

 known, were the product of his experience in the field and of his 

 careful thought. In a letter just received by the writer from 

 Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, the Palasontologist of the United 



