430 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK MEETING 



more labor than the preparation of a report on a fire for a dail}'- paper. 

 The more intelligent criticism was due to ignorance of the conditions — 

 that the state had abandoned the work, that the office staff had become 

 broken, and that new hands as well as new minds had to be trained ; 

 that the work had, as it were, to be begun de novo. Even now it is not 

 generally known that the great collections U})on which much of the state 

 paleontology is based were made b}^ Professor Hall at his own expense 

 prior to 1856 and very largely at his expense after 1866, the appropri- 

 ations for collecting as such having continued practically onl}^ from 1856 

 to 1866. 



The delay in beginning to publish the volumes after the third was due 

 to exceedingly wise for'ethought. The work was published fragmentarily, 

 so that results were made available to workers everywhere almost as soon 

 as they were obtained, but the volumes did not appear promptly. Had 

 they appeared promptly, had each division been finished in order, the 

 work could have been stopped at any time ; but the drawing and engrav- 

 ing went on for several volumes simultaneously, so that at no time for a 

 number of years was any volume very near completion, but so much 

 work had been done on all that continuation was necessary in order to 

 save what had been expended already. More than once this argument 

 prevailed with an unwilling committee, and the appropriations were 

 ordered. On one occasion a very prominent citizen of New York city 

 told me that there was no longer any use in trying to head off Professor 

 Hall, for " he keeps so far ahead in his work that out of mere shame it 

 is necessary to keep him at it." 



The great mass of his publications appeared after he had reached three 

 score years, an age when most men feel that the burdens of life should 

 be lessened. He kept himself 3^oung by persistent work, and when 

 eighty-six years old his mind was keen, more read}^ to accept new ideas 

 and to reject erroneous, though cherished opinions, than when he was 

 but thirty years old. 



Professor Hall's energies, however, were not confined to the work in 

 New York. Forty-seven years ago he contributed three important 

 chapters to Foster and Whitney's report on the Lake Superior region ; 

 fifty-three years ago he prepared a discussion for Fremont's report, and 

 soon afterward another for Stansbury's. His share of the jNIexican 

 Boundary report, published more than forty years ago, occupied 100 

 quarto pages. In the early fifties he sent Meek and Hay den to the Black 

 Hills region to make collections of vertebrates and invevtebrates, thus 

 initiating the great work done afterward in the far west b}' those ex- 

 plorers. He was state geologist of Iowa and afterward of Wisconsin, 

 meeting in each case with the degree of success which usually attends 



