Apkil 21, 1911J 



SCIENCE 



601 



whose house was the center of delightful hos- 

 pitality to many Americans, studying at Leip- 

 zig. He found great happiness in his home 

 life, in his children and grandchildren, and 

 also in the numerous friends, whom he at- 

 tached not only by his unusual abilities but 

 by his personal charm. He was social by 

 nature, keenly humorous, warm and faithful 

 in his attachments, full of the zest of life. 

 He was profoundly modest and seemed never 

 to know how high his abilites were estimated 

 by others. He never quarrelled, but was for 

 every good cause he championed a good 

 fighter. Perhaps his most distinguishing 

 trait was his remarkable combination of keen 

 practical sense in the use of means with en- 

 thusiasm in the pursuit of ideal aims. With 

 all his buoyant vitality, with all his eager 

 interest in men and affairs, he was essentially 

 an idealist, who won the love and admiration 

 of many friends both in Europe and America. 



0. S. MiNOT 



SAMUEL FSANKLIN EMMONS 

 The death of Samuel Franklin Emmons at 

 his home in Washington, D. C, on March 28, 

 1911, after an illness lasting only five days, 

 removed from the ranks of American economic 

 geologists the one who, by virtue of his influ- 

 ence on the progress of his branch of science 

 and by his long and illustrious service, worth- 

 ily stood at their head. For the last few years 

 Mr. Emmons's increasing infirmity had given 

 concern to his friends, but his own cheerful- 

 ness and serenity were unaffected by bodily 

 weakness and when his colleagues missed him 

 from his desk at the Geological Survey offices 

 during the few days before his death they 

 believed merely that a cold in conjunction 

 with unseasonable weather confined him to his 

 house. None foreboded the fatal ending of 

 his illness. 



Born on March 29, 1841, in Boston, Mass., 

 the home of his ancestors since 1640, Mi. 

 Emmons at his death lacked one day of 

 his seventieth year. His great-grandfather, 

 Samuel Franklin, after whom he was named, 

 was a first cousin and close friend of Benja- 

 min Franklin. 



Mr. Emmons graduated from Harvard Col- 

 lege in 1861 and went abroad to continue his 

 studies, first at the Ecole Imperiale des Mines 

 in Paris and afterwards at the Bergakademie 

 in Freiberg, Saxony. He returned to the 

 United States in 1866 and after spending 

 eight months in visiting the mining districts 

 of the west he joined Clarence King as a vol- 

 unteer assistant in the United States Geolog- 

 ical Exploration of the fortieth parallel, re- 

 ceiving his official appointment in the winter 

 of 1867-8. For nearly ten years he remained 

 with this organization, seeing varied service, 

 gaining that wide knowledge of the geology of 

 the west that he afterwards turned to such 

 good use, and contributing to the published 

 results of the exploration. With Mr. Arnold 

 Hague he was joint author of the second vol- 

 ume of the great fortieth parallel series, en- 

 titled " Descriptive Geology " and he had a 

 part also in the preparation of Volume III., 

 " Mining Industry." His work carried him 

 to Virginia City in the winter of 1867-8; to 

 Mono Lake in March, 1868; to the unknown 

 mountain ranges of central and eastern Ne- 

 vada and of western Utah in the following 

 summer; to the Wasatch Range and to the 

 region adjacent to Great Salt Lake in 1869; 

 to Mount Eainier in 1870, and to the Uinta 

 Mountains in 1871 and 1872. 



Having accomplished his duties in connec- 

 tion with the fortieth parallel survey, Mr. 

 Emmons, in the autumn of 1877, returned to 

 the west and engaged in the then stirring 

 business of raising cattle, near Cheyenne, 

 Wyoming. When, however, Clarence King in 

 1879 organized the United States Geological 

 Survey and became its first director, he sought 

 out his friend and associate of earlier years 

 and placed Mr. Emmons in charge of the 

 economic geology of the Eocky Mountain 

 division with instructions to make a detailed 

 survey of the newly opened Leadville district. 

 During the field-work at Leadville, which 

 lasted until 1881, Mr. Emmons collected the 

 statistics of the precious metals in the Rocky 

 Mountains for the Tenth Census and in Vol- 

 ume XIII. (" Precious Metals ") of that pub- 

 lication, jointly with Dr. George F. Becker, 



