432 Ohihiary— Professor James Hall. 



serials. The collections of many of the early expeditions in 

 the Western States were entrusted to Hall for description ; 

 thus he described the Cretaceous fossils collected by the Mexican 

 Boundary Commission, the Carboniferous Crinoids of Missouri, 

 the general collections of the Pacific Railway Survey, and he 

 wrote the appendix on the geology and paleontology of the 

 Great Salt Lake of Utah, from materials brought back by the 

 Stansbury expedition. The number of interesting fossils which 

 it was Hall's privilege to describe is enormous, and the following 

 are a few of the well-known and impoi'tant genera we owe to him : 

 Among the graptolites there are Callograptus. Dicrnnogrnfius, and 

 Phyllogroptus ; among the corals, CcelophyUum, Beliophyllum, and 

 Streptelasma ; among the Pelmatozoa, Calceocrimis, Seterocrinus, 

 Deridrocrinus, Glyptaster, Glyptocrinus, and Semicystis ; there is the 

 star-fish Palceaster, and the echinid Lepidechinis ; the additions to 

 the Monticuliporoids and Brj'ozoa ai-e very numerous, including 

 Favistella, Callopora, Bactropora, and Trematopora ; and among the 

 Crustacea are Pleuronotiis, Bathynotus, Mesothyra, and PtycJiai^pis. His 

 Memoir on North American PJurypterida, Pterygoti, and Ccratiocaris 

 (1871), is one of the most valuable contributions to these forms of 

 Crustacea. The number of his additions to the Paleeozoic mollusca 

 and Brachiopods reminds us of Disraeli's account of how Charlemagne 

 made Christians, for Hall founded new genera in legions and 

 christened them in platoons. But Hall was not only a palseonto- 

 grapher ; his papers on the microscopic structure of Palasozoio 

 brachiopod shells, and his discovery and description of the convoluted 

 plate that supports the digestive tube in crinoids, show that he 

 paid attention to anatomy. He was also keenly interested in the 

 broader questions of stratigraphical geology. It was Hall who 

 in 1859 first definitely stated the connection between the elevation 

 of mountain chains and the previous accumulation of sedimentary 

 deposits, and argued that " the direction of any mountain chain 

 corresponds with the original line of greatest accumulation." 



Among other palgeontological contributions not connected with 

 his own State, Hall described the Graptolites for the Canadian 

 Survey ; and owing to his especially friendly relations with the 

 Canadian geologists he was appropriately chosen President of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of Science when 

 it met at Montreal in 1857. He was elected on the list of Foreign 

 Members of the Geological Society in 1848, and received the Wollastoa 

 Medal from that Society in 1858, and as the doyen of American 

 geologists was elected the first President of the Geological Society of 

 America in 1889. In spite of his great age, he last year visited the 

 Ural Mountains with the International Geological Congress, and, aided 

 by J. M. Clark, he has continued his palseontological studies to the 

 last. Professor Hall's courtesy, energy, and cheeriness endeared him 

 to all with whom he was brought in contact, and his personal 

 popularity frequently proved of great service to the State Survey, 

 as when its work was harassed by the faction fights over the 

 Erie Canal, or when the department was attacked by the State 

 Librarian, Mr. Melvil Dewey, in 1895. 



