NOVEMBER 24, 1899. ] 
that branch of the public service a rare com- 
‘bination of culture, zeal, knowledge of the world, 
and executive ability ; and no man living will 
claim to have done more than he did for the 
character and efficiency of the survey.* 
The arduous and confining duties of his 
office in the Coast Survey naturally limited 
his scientific work to the sphere embraced 
by his practical work, but he was also 
recognized ‘“‘as an active student in other 
branches of science, especially dynamics 
and molecular physics.”’+ Of such work, 
the most important, however, was that con- 
nected with the magnetic survey of the 
United States, which was carried on at the 
expense of the Bache fund, the direction of 
which was entrusted to Hilgard by the 
National Academy of Sciences. 
His lectures on The Tides and Tidal 
Action in Harbors, delivered before the 
American Institute in New York, was re- 
garded asremarkable for its lucid and terse 
exposition of principles without the aid of 
mathematical symbols. Later he delivered 
a course of twenty lectures before the stu- 
dents of the Johns Hopkins University on 
the subject of Extended Territorial Survey- 
ing, which, was received with much appre- 
ciation. 
His life-work, however, was in connection 
with the Coast Survey, and his relation to it 
will always be accepted as his greatest con- 
tribution to American science. From 1886 
till his death, in 1891, he lived quietly in 
retirement, vainly endeavoring to regain the 
health and strength which he had sacrificed 
in the patriotic performance of his duty to 
the country of his adoption. 
ROGERS. 
It was indeed a happy suggestion that led 
our Association in 1881 to recognize the life- 
long interest of William Barton Rogers in its 
welfare by electing him as the first of our 
* SCIENCE, May 15, 1891. 
t Popular Science Monthly, Vol. VII., p. 618. 
SCIENCE. 
763 
honorary fellows. Rogers was the last pre- 
siding officer of the Association of American 
Geologists and Naturalists, and it was he 
who inducted to office William C Redfield, 
‘at the first meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation in 1848. It is for this reason that 
his name stands first in the list of our presi- 
dents. This name also appears as the 
twenty-fifth on the list, for in 1875 he was 
honored by an election to the presidency 
and he presided over the meeting held in 
Buffalo in 1876. 
It is not an easy matter to find a suitable 
designation for so versatile and accomplished 
ascientist as Rogers, for he was master of 
more subjects than one, and belonged to a 
period in the history of science, when 
teachers were students and authorities in 
several branches of learning. He was one 
of the four sons of Patrick K. Rogers, who, 
for a decade, was professor of natural phi- 
losophy and mathematics at William and 
Mary College, Virginia. William Barton* 
was born in Philadelphia in 1804, and fol- 
lowed his parents to Williamsburg, in 1819. 
His early education was received from his 
father, and for a time he was a student of 
William and Mary. Later he became an 
assistant to his father, who wrote : 
My second son, who is now in his twentieth 
* There are many sketches of W. B. Rogers, among 
which are a notice of William Barton Rogers, founder 
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by Josiah 
P. Cooke, in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences, Vol. XVIII., p. 426 ; Memoirs of William 
Barton Rogers, 1804-1882, presented before the Na- 
tional Academy, by Francis A. Walker ; The Brothers 
Rogers read before the American Philosophical So- 
ciety, by Dr. William S. W. Ruschenberger; and a 
memorial pamphlet issued by the Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology with a photo-gelatine portrait. 
There is also a sketch in the Popular Science Monthly, 
Vol. IX., p. 606, September, 1876, with an engraved 
portrait on wood, where monthly there has been pub- 
lished a life and letters of William Barton Rogers 
edited by his wife, Emma Savage Rogers, in two vol- 
umes, Boston, 1896, that contains several portraits 
both of himself and of his brothers. 
