140 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. Xo. 500. 



character, no less than his remarkable en- 

 ergy and persistence, attracted to him the 

 admiration of many western men, by whom 

 freqixent tempting offers were made him to 

 leave the unremunerative paths of science 

 for the material rewards of business, but 

 in vain. He would not seriously consider 

 the abandonment of his chosen work for 

 any reward whatever and he died in har- 

 ness. 



In* 1887 he married Miss Anna M. Peter- 

 son, who, with four children, survives him. 



Hatcher's -work for Professor Marsh and 

 the U. S. Geological Survey continued for 

 nine years and though, in 1890, he was 

 appointed an assistant in geology in Yale 

 University, he kept up his field-work with 

 unbrokep success, amassing a very large 

 part of the enormous and invaluable col- 

 lections which are stored at New Haven 

 and Washington. 



He accepted, in the spring of 1893, a call 

 to Princeton University as curator of verte- 

 brate paleontology and assistant in geology 

 and at once threw himself into his new 

 duties with eharapteristic ardor. For the 

 three summers of 1893-5 he conducted 

 field-parties of students through large parts 

 of Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota and, 

 with all of his old interest and skill, gath- 

 ered priceless collections of mammals from 

 the Uinta, White River, Loup Fork and 

 Sheridan beds, accomplishing wonders, in 

 spite of the scanty resources which sadly 

 hampered his plans. His students became 

 his enthusiastic friends and admirers, 

 glorying in the courage and devotion which 

 overcame every obstacle, material or moral. 

 In return, Hatcher took the warmest in- 

 terest in his students, especially in those 

 who were struggling against difficulties to 

 secure an education; in the quietest and 

 most unostentatious way he was continu- 

 ally devising effective means to help such 

 students to help themselves and thus en- 



abled them to continue their studies with- 

 out any impairment of their self-respect. 



The most important work which Hatcher 

 undertook during his connection with 

 Princeton was his exploration of Pata- 

 gonia in the years 1896 to 1899. The plan 

 was all his own. and was not proposed to 

 the geological department until everything 

 was nearly ripe for action; he secured the 

 greater part of the necessary funds and, 

 with characteristic generosity, was himself 

 a liberal contributor. How successful this 

 great undertaking was is very generally 

 known and needs not to be repeated here. 

 Great credit for this success is due to Messrs. 

 Peterson and Colburn, who were associated 

 with Hatcher in the work, but the soul of 

 the enterprise was Hatcher himself. In his 

 'Narrative of the Expeditions' he has left 

 an extremely well-written and interesting 

 account of these explorations, which, how- 

 ever, gives the reader but an inadequate 

 conception of the difficulties and perils 

 which beset him, and of the boundless 

 energy and courage with which those diffi- 

 culties were met and overcome. Painful 

 wounds, dangerous sickness, indescribable 

 suffering, the hardships due to a severe 

 climate and a savage wilderness and to 

 inadequate equipment, in vain combined 

 to turn him back, though he was twice com,^ 

 pelled to return home for short periods of 

 rest and recuperation. In the history of 

 scientific exploration there are few chap- 

 ters recording truer heroism and achieve- 

 ment than Hatcher's journeys through 

 Patagonia. 



The principal object of the expeditions 

 was to gather the most extensive possible 

 series of the fossil mammals for which Pat- 

 agonia has been so famous since the days 

 of Darwin's 'Voyage of the Beagle,' and 

 next to determine the stratigraphical suc- 

 cession of the beds in which these fossils 

 occur. This involved extensive explora- 



