MEMORIAL OF J. D. IRVING 37 



MEMORIAL OF JOHX DUER IRVING ^ 

 BY JAMES F. KEMP 



Amid the widespread feelings of relief, albeit a bit apprehensive, with 

 which the cessation of hostilities has been received, we turn aside to re- 

 member one who made, while 3^et the war went on, the supreme sacrifice 

 in the service of his country. Just before the first of August the cable 

 brought the news that John Duer Irving, Captain in the Eleventh Regi- 

 ment of United States Engineers ("The Fighting Engineers," as they 

 have been called ever since the first British drive at Cambrai), Professor 

 of Economic Geology in Yale University, and FelloAV in this Society since 

 1905, had passed away while on duty with his regiment at the Flanders 

 front. The Geological Society thus lost one who had been often at its 

 meetings, and who was widely known as one of the most fruitful and 

 stimulating workers on the problems presented by ore deposits and other 

 useful minerals. 



John Duer Irving was born in Madison, AYisconsin, August 18, 1874, 

 and was the oldest child of Roland Duer Irving, to whose work in the 

 fifteen years following Lake Superior geology owes so much. Roland 

 Irving was at the time Professor of Geology, Mineralogy, and Metallurgy 

 in the University of Wisconsin. John Irving, the son, passed his boyhood 

 in the home where his father was preparing Monograph Y of the United 

 States Geological Survey on the Copper-bearing Rocks of Lake Superior, 

 and was beginning the studies and contributions on the Gogebic Range, 

 which were completed after his death by his friend and colleague, Charles 

 R. Yan Hise. Not only was John Irving^s father busy w4th the Kewee- 

 nawan rocks, but the skillful hand of his mother was preparing with her 

 brush and pencil the beautiful colored plates with which their microscopic 

 characters are illustrated. After the loss of Prof. Roland Irving, Mrs. 

 Irving moved, with her children, to New York among her kinsfolk, and 

 John was prepared for Columbia College, the alma mater of his father, 

 grandfather, and great-grandfather, the last named a brother of Wash- 

 ington Irving. John gave special attention to geology during his under- 

 graduate days, passed the vacation following his junior year, with one of 

 Prof. Henry F. Osborn's parties from the American Museum of Natural 

 History, in the Tertiary beds of the Uintas, and graduated in 1896. 



Having decided to follow his father's footsteps in the calling of geolo- 

 gist, he spent the summer with the writer in the eastern Adirondacks and 



1 In the absence of the author, his abstract was read before the Society December 27, 

 1918. by C. P. Berkey. 



Manuscript received by the Secretary of the Society January 6, 1919. 



