MEMORIAL OP ORVILLE A. DERBY 17 



Derby was made its chief — a position he held during the rest of his life. 

 The appropriations were necessarily small at the outset, hut the work 

 undertaken was of great importance to Brazil, for sooner or later it was 

 to point the way to an intelligent and scientific development of the natural 

 resources of the country. 



The first edition of Branner's Geologia Elementar was thus dedicated : 



"To Orville A. Derby, who has devoted his life to the study of the geology 

 of Brazil, and has done more than any one else to solve its many problems, 

 this work is affectionately dedicated." 



This is a brief and mild statement of Derby's' great service to Brazil, 

 and to the science of geology, without mentioning his many other services 

 to science and to that country. 



Visitors to Brazil who w r ere interested in geologjr always found him 

 helpful in connection with their work. Dr. J. B. Woodworth, of Harvard, 

 who went to Brazil in 1908 to study the Permian glaciation of the South- 

 ern States of that country, says that "without his aid and personal at- 

 tendance it would not have been possible for me to have carried on the 

 Sbaler Memorial Expedition in Brazil to a successful issue in anything 

 like the time in which that work was accomplished. With true Latin- 

 American courtesy he paved the way for me to find what he would have 

 been proud himself to have discovered — the actual occurrence of glaciated 

 pebbles in the tillite beds of Parana." 



First and last, Derby was a paleontologist. He had no fondness for 

 administrative work; he was but little interested in structural geology or 

 in its methods ; he was forced by circumstances into some acquaintance 

 with microscopic petrography; but his interest in paleontology was gen- 

 uine, deep, and all-comprehensive. Prom all the cares of office and the 

 worriments of life he found relief and happiness in boxes of fragments 

 of fossils that most paleontologists would have put away as not worth 

 while. 



It was chiefly to this interest of his in paleontology that we owe Dr. 

 C. A. White's "Contributions to the Paleontology of Brazil," published a1 

 Rio in 1887, and the following valuable works by Dr. John M. Clark: 

 "Trilobites of the Erere and Maecuru sandstones," Rio, 1896 ; "Upper 

 Silurian fauna of Rio Trombetas," Rio, 1899 ; ''Devonian mollusks of the 

 State of Para," Rio, 1899, and "Devonian fossils of Parana," Rio, 1913. 

 Besides these more important publications there are many smaller papers 

 on paleontology that can not be mentioned here, and there still remains 

 unpublished an important volume by D. S. Jordan on the Cretaceous fossil 

 fishes of Ceara. 



