92 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1413 



knees. It is at least conceivable that the dif- 

 ferences in such respects might affect the tem- 

 perature reactions of the body during fever, 

 more advantageously in the case of those with 

 less clothing. But if this is the explanation 

 in the particular instance under consideration, 

 it does not seem to hold in others; the Me- 

 lanesians to whom the disease was brought 

 suffered as greatly as the Chamon-os and Ta- 

 hitians, according to reports, although they 

 cover the body at least as little as do the Caro- 

 line Islanders. Whatever the explanation of 

 the Saipan observations, the fact remains that 

 the two contrasted peoples differed greatly in 

 their mortality; in the absence of any distin- 

 guishable external factors, their difference is 

 most reasonably to be attributed to constitu- 

 tional peculiarities. 



Henet E. Crampton 

 Barnaed College, 



Columbia University, 

 Decembee 24, 1921. 



PRESENTATION TO PROFESSOR 

 EMERSON 



This society has come at last to the fountain- 

 head of American geology — ^Amherst College. 

 Nearly a century ago, while Amos Eaton was 

 inspiring students at the Rensselaer School by 

 his novel modes of teaching, and Silliman the 

 greater, at Yale, was illuminating the facts 

 and fancies of this science by his brilliant and 

 fascinating deliveries, Edward Hitchcock was 

 actually creating a geological survey of this 

 Commonwealth of Massachusetts and initiating 

 classes of students into the astonishing revela- 

 tions and practical applications of a new 

 science. It was a difficult field he found here 

 in this Connecticut Valley and its complicated 

 uplands; many different categories of geo- 

 logical facts crowded upon him, but he inter- 

 preted them with clarity and with such degree 

 of distinction that he was, in due course, se- 



1 Address of presentation to Professor Ben- 

 jamin Kendall Emerson, LL.D., of Amherst Col- 

 lege, at the annual meeting of the Geological 

 Society of America, at Amlierst, December 29, 

 1921. 



lected by Governor Marcy of New York as the 

 first state geologist for that well organized 

 survey; an appointment which he accepted, 

 entered upon but soon abandoned because that 

 field was too far away from Amherst CoUege 

 —indeed, reason in plenty! 



Let us remind om-selves that Edward Hitch- 

 cock was a distinguished divine, professor of 

 natural theology and geology and president of 

 this college, in the most uplifting days of the 

 last century. This minister of the gospel was 

 boldly entering upon paths lined with harvest 

 fields of truth which to his contemporaries were 

 fields of poison weeds. With equanimity he 

 faced the bigotry of common ignorance and the 

 theological odium; but his students heard and 

 followed him gladly into those days of delight- 

 ful and romantic adventure over this country- 

 side, when every hill and knoll, each stream 

 and gully, each glacial boulder and pictm'esque 

 retreat was baptized by the geologist-president 

 and his classes, with ceremonies of address and 

 poem and song: Mounts Castor and Pollux, 

 Mount Pleasant and Mount Pleasanter, Met- 

 tawampe and Aquilo, the Crescent, the Occi- 

 dent, the glacial stones Rock Rimmon, Rock 

 Oreb, Rock Etam, and so on through a long 

 list of natural monuments; names which should 

 never be permitted to disappear from the map 

 of Massachusetts, for they are storied monu- 

 ments not only of her science and her scenery 

 but of one of her great sons. 



If I pay thus brief tribute to the eminent 

 Hitchcock, it is only to intimate the influence 

 which helped to mould this other great teacher 

 of our science to whom we are come tonight 

 with our hearts in our hands. Professor Emer- 

 son has grasped the very horns of the altar 

 of this science, and as we consider wherein has 

 lain his globing success as a teacher, let us 

 remember the atmosphere he breathed here in 

 his student days. It was an atmosphere 

 sweetened by the fragrance of a science just 

 bursting into flower, tinged with joyous and 

 natural emotions, but never robbed of its 

 spirit of devotion. Teachers are the personifi- 

 cations of immortality. The men whom Emer- 

 son trained, and who have arisen one by one 

 to their own niches in the science, sent out in 



