EDUARD SUESS 



WILLIAM HERBERT HOBBS 



Of men, as of mountains, it is often true that one towers in 

 isolated grandeur well above his fellows. Of the lower eminences 

 there arise questions of relative prominence, but of the one, never. 

 Eduard Suess, who passed from life on April 26, ranked as one of 

 the intellectual giants of his age, and his masterpiece, Das Antlitz 

 der Erde, as the greatest work upon geology since the modern 

 science was founded three-quarters of a century ago in The Prin- 

 ciples of Geology of Sir Charles Lyell. Already past eighty, Suess 

 had for years been fighting the encroachments of advancing age 

 in a hardening of the arteries, and his death following upon a 

 bronchial affection came peacefully at his home in the Afrikaner- 

 gasse, Vienna. His friends in every land, and they were many 

 and devoted, will in mourning his loss not fail to account it a special 

 mercy that he was spared a knowledge of the world cataclysm, in 

 the storm center of which his country is now struggling under 

 severe reverses, and which its harsh demands upon Servia pre- 

 cipitated. Deeply interested as he was in the political life of his 

 country, and high as he ranked in its councils, the predicament in 

 which Austria-Hungary now finds herself, with the consciousness 

 of responsibility for it, must have rested with especial weight upon 

 him. Passing away when he did, his last years were happy ones, 

 as unsought honors and evidences of devotion and esteem multi- 

 plied, with his life work gloriously completed and his son succeeding 

 to his own chair at the University of Vienna. 



Professor Suess was born in London, August 20, 183 1, where 

 his Saxon father was an importer of Bohemian wool, but while 

 Eduard was still young the family removed to Prague in Bohemia 

 and later to Vienna. England he often referred to as his "native 

 land," and he retained a lively interest in English affairs. Though 

 intended for a commerical career, Suess attended the universities 



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