A great American Geologist of the last Century.^ 



PKOFESSOR JAMES HALL (1811-98). 



(PLATE X.) 



TAMES HALL'S active career in American geology extended 

 ^ over sixty-two years of uninterrupted official connexion with 

 the State of New York, a record which stands unsurpassed in the 

 history of official science. At the age of 25 Hall entered the 

 geological service of New York upon the organization of the Natural 

 History Survey in 1836, and his service was terminated by death 

 in 1898, at the age of 87 years. So great was the span of his life 

 that it not only covered but formed in itself a large share of the 

 evolution of geological science in America. James Hall's enthusiasm 

 for his work never diminished. His death was but the incident of 

 a day, and his life, even to that day, was inspired by the undivided 

 purpose to develop and advance his science. Such a life could not 

 fail to be immensely productive, and his was rich in its output from 

 the publication of his first great quarto report on the Geology of 

 the Fourth District of New York (1843) to the last of the thirteen 

 quarto volumes of the Palaeontology of New York. 



When the Natural History Survey was organized Hall entered upon 

 it for the first field season in 1837, as an assistant to Dr. Ebenezer 

 Emmons, in the crystalline rock region of the Adirondack Mountains. 

 The second year found him in charge of the " Fourth District " 

 of western New York, then a sparsely settled and still heavily 

 timbered region. Here he gradually unfolded the beautifully 

 ordered succession of the Palaeozoic rocks with their wealth of fossil 

 . life, and it was their richness in fossils that gave birth to his desire 

 and purpose to describe and figure them, and with them to verify 

 and establish the classification of the " New York Formations " as 

 set forth by the conclusions of his colleagues on the State Survey. 



No provision had been made for such a study of the fossils in 

 the original plans of the Survey ; when, therefore, the time arrived 

 that the work was officially concluded in 1843, Hall succeeded in 

 obtaining the sanction of the State, and was himself commissioned 

 to prosecute this work and prepare a report on the Paleontology of 

 New York, which M^as to be in one volume and to be completed in one 

 year. The volume actually occupied three years, and was followed 

 by twelve more volumes, under the title of The Palceoniology of 

 New York (which appeared successively in a period of more than 

 half a century). The work is still going on vigorously. The " New 



1 A brief obituary of Professor James Hall, For. Memb. Geol. Soe.Lond. 

 1848, appeared in the Geol. Mag. for September, 1898, pp. 341-2. By the 

 kindness of his successor. Professor John M. Clarke, LL.D., For. Corr. Geol. 

 Soc. Lond., we are enabled this month to publish some additional notes of 

 our old friend and fellow-worker, together with an excellent portrait. 



