MEMOIR OF JAMES HALL 425 



Aiiiioaiicements concerning certain details of the printed program 

 and of the annual dinner were made by Professor J. F. Kemp and Mr 

 E. 0: Hovey. 



The following memorial of the first President of the Society was read 

 by the President from the Chair : 



MEMOIR OF JAMES HALL 

 BY JOHN J. STEVENSON * 



Professor James Hall, the first President of this Society, was born in 

 Hingham, Massachusetts, September 12, 1811, and died in Echo Hill, 

 Bethlehem, New Hampshire, August 7, 1898. 



His father, James Hall, came from England, when only nineteen years 

 old, to spend a year in travel through the United States. On the vessel 

 he met a girl of his own age, Susan Dourdain, who, with her parents, was 

 coming to reside in America. He married her soon after their arrival in 

 Boston, and a rupture of friendly relations with his father followed, so 

 that the young couple were compelled to make their way as best they 

 might. Neither had been fitted by previous training for any such struggle, 

 and poverty was always the lot of the family. 



James Hall, the eldest son, was sent to the public school in Hingham, 

 but lost much time, as his assistance was needed for support of the family. 

 He succeeded, however, in obtaining private lessons in Latin and in 

 securing books by doing, as he said, anything and everything. Nothing 

 daunted him. When Silliman delivered the Lowell lectures in Boston, 

 Hall attended them all, though on each occasion he had to walk from 

 Hingham and back again. 



His preparation for Rensselaer Institute having been completed, he 

 hardly knew how, he went to Troy, where Eaton was imparting his own 

 enthusiasm to nearly every pupil with whom he came into contact. It 

 was soon discovered that the lad from Massachusetts had not merely a 

 taste, but rather a passion, for natural history, and Eaton himself gained 

 inspiration from him. Each summer was spent in field work, under 

 Eaton's direction, and often in company with Ebenezer Emmons, then 

 an instructor in the Institute. Hall collected nearly nine hundred species 

 of plants while a student and determined them. In geological excur- 

 sions he reached as far south as the Coal Measures of the anthracite 

 region, and had begun before his graduation that collection of fossil plants 

 which afterwards proved so important. 



*I am indebted to Mrs Thomas l3. Bishop, of San Francisco, California, the daughter of Pro- 

 fessor Hall, for information which has been used in preparing this memoir. The illustrations orig. 

 inally appeared in Science, and appear here through the courtesy of Professor J. M'K. Cattell, editor 

 of that journal. 



LXI— Bull. Geol. See. Am., Vol.10, 1898 



