October 31, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



607 



naturally inquiring type of mind, human 

 interrogation points, with a consuming de- 

 sire to discover the reason of things. The 

 currents of human life and action some- 

 times attract them less than the phenomena 

 of nature. They turn to the latter as the 

 proper objects of their effort. If endowed 

 with that happy but rare combination of an 

 ability to reason logically and closely and 

 yet to let imagination have its revealing 

 play, they may advance the outposts of 

 knowledge in no small degree. 



Let me illustrate by the lives of two or 

 three geologists, selecting them because they 

 are less familiar than the youth of some of 

 the more widely Imown names in other 

 branches and are therefore possessed of 

 freshness and newness. James Hall, our 

 famous New Tork state geologist of other 

 days, was a lad in Hingham, Massachusetts, 

 near Boston. Hearing that a school had 

 been started near Troy, N. Y., where nat- 

 ural sciences were especially taught, and 

 having slender resources, he walked from 

 Hingham to Troy and began his studies. 

 He roamed the hills around the little city 

 of the upper Hudson valley, collected the 

 plants and animals, became a teacher in the 

 school and ultimately the official of this and 

 other states. He devoted his mature years 

 to the description and illustration of the 

 dead and gone life of the past with such 

 skill that his works are among America's 

 greatest contributions to science. Peter 

 Lesley, the famous state geologist of Penn- 

 sylvania, was a graduate of the Andover 

 Theological Seminary. From failing health 

 he gave up a settled pastorate and became 

 a distributor of bibles in the remoter hills 

 of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Walking 

 from cabin to cabin of the mountaineers, 

 his eye caught the wonderful geological 

 structure displayed in this region and he 

 turned to natural science; never losing, 

 however, that love of his fellow man which 



first directed his steps to the mountains as 

 a colporter of sacred books. Newberry, our 

 old-time and distinguished professor, was a 

 boy amid the coal mines owned by his 

 father in eastern Ohio. The wonderfully 

 preserved ferns in the beds associated with 

 the coal interested him profoundly. In 

 later life he tried to curb his natural tend- 

 encies and practise medicine in Cleveland, 

 but after five years he gave up the struggle 

 and became naturalist to several successive 

 exploring parties, sent out by the federal 

 government in the West. After the Civil 

 War he was called to be one of the half 

 dozen professors in our School of Mines. 

 He was our first native-born student and 

 describer of the floras of past geological 

 time. 



There come also to our class-rooms young 

 men of able and gifted minds, but as yet 

 with no positive inclination toward any 

 special line of work. The influence of some 

 teacher who has the divine fire may arouse 

 latent interest and ambition so that a career 

 of good and serviceable work opens out. To 

 this last group who enter the class-rooms 

 without special call for the future and 

 whom a teacher can influence for a few 

 months, it is all-important, whether they 

 follow science or not, to present in addition 

 to the hard facts of the subject as many of 

 its great truths and generalizations as pos- 

 sible. We should leave some deep imprint 

 which they can never forget. The concep- 

 tion of the earth, for example, as the prod- 

 uct of the long, long interplay of many 

 forces, is one which can be readily driven 

 home. The rise and fall of continents, the 

 advance and retreat of oceans, the records 

 of the more recent, and then of the remoter, 

 and finally of the most ancient past, which 

 have now been brought into orderly se- 

 quence, convey an impress which, once 

 stamped, can never be effaced. When, 

 therefore, the future lawyer, physician, 



