A great American Geologist — James Hall. 485 



analytical morpliology, which were in large measure the product of 

 his own studies. He had also a keen appreciation of the necessity of 

 making his work intelligible to students by the excellence and accuracy 

 of his illustrations ; to secure this he drew his draughtsmen and 

 illustrators, his hthographers and pressmen, from various quarters 

 of the world, and carried out the printing under his own eye and 

 within easy reach of his own laboratory. A word is appropriate in 

 regard to Hall's laboratory. In the early fifties he estabUshed 

 himself and his collections in a building that he had specially arranged 

 for the prosecution of his work, and then began to gather about hhn 

 men who were to assist him in the working out of the ever- 

 accumulating materials for his great undertaking. In this laboratory 

 there entered, and in due time emerged, a long Hue of assistants 

 who afterwards acquired an established place in American geological 

 science*. Among these were Fielding B. Meek, Eobert P. Whitfield, 

 Ferdinand V. Hayden, Charles A. White, Charles D. Walcott, 

 Charles E. Beecher, John M. Clarke, Charles Schuchert, and a number 

 of others. The old laboratory still stands and has happily been set 

 aside by the city of Albany as a place not to be effaced, and it bears 

 upon it a commemorative tablet attached thereto by the Association 

 of American Geologists. 



Mr. Hall was naturally not content with activities confined to the 

 State of New York. He had a colossal capacity for work, and was at 

 one and the same time during the later fifties State Geologist of 

 Iowa, State Geologist of Wisconsin, in active association with 

 Sir WilHam Logan on the Canadian Survey, and also prosecuting 

 the work in New York. It was in these busy years that, as President 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he 

 prepared and delivered his most philosophical discussion on a 

 geological theme, " The Origin of the North American Continent." 

 In this he set forth an entirely new explanation of mountain building, 

 which is still highly regarded, especially by the French geologists, 

 under the designation of the Law of James Hall. While very 

 seriously engaged in these undertakings, almost every State in the 

 Union, as it proceeded towards the organization of a geological survey, 

 made proposals for his services. Hall, however, really cared for this 

 outside work only in so far as he could touch its fossils, and it is 

 because he ignored reports and turned all his efforts to an exposition 

 of the fossils that the support of Iowa and Wisconsin was filially 

 withdrawn. Naturally, in his later years, though with many 

 imperative interests, he became more and more dependent upon his 

 assistants for the preparation of his great volumes. 



There are few left who still remember the singular combination 

 of traits that this remarkable man presented. He was gentle, 

 affectionate, and confiding ; on the other hand, he was suspicious, 

 irascible, and imperious, and such a contradictory combination 

 of quahties required patience and careful adjustment on the part 

 of his associates. For fifteen or twenty years Hall was much engaged 



