134 proceedings of the amherst meeting 



Sessiox of Thursday Evexexg 



annual dinner 



Thursday evening, in College Hall, the Society held its annual dinner, 

 together with the Paleontological Society, the Mineralogical Society of 

 America, the Society of Economic Geologists, and guests. More than two 

 hundred persons participated. President Kemp presided and acted as 

 toastmaster, calling on Charles Schuchert, John M. Clarke, George Otis 

 Smith, Frank D. Adams, and George D. Louderback for remarks. 



PRESENTATION OF LOVING CUP TO PROF. B. K. EMERSON 



The feature of the evening was the presentation to Prof. B. K. Emer- 

 son of a silver loving cup by his friends in the Society. The address of 

 presentation was made by Dr. John M. Clarke, who said in part : 



This Society has come at last to the fountain-head of American geology — 

 Amherst College. Nearly a century ago, while Amos Eaton was inspiring stu- 

 dents at the Rensselaer School by his noyel modes of teaching, and Sillinian 

 the Greater, at Yale, was illuminating the facts and fancies of this science by 

 his brilliant and fascinating deliveries. Edward Hitchcock was actually creat- 

 ing a geological survey of this Commonwealth of Massachusetts and initiating 

 classes of students into the astonishing revelations and practical applications 

 of a new science. It was a difficult field he found here in this Connecticut 

 Valley and its complicated uplands; many different categories of geological 

 tacts crowded upon him, but he interpreted them with clarity and with such 

 degree of distinction that he was, in due course, selected by Governor Marcy, 

 of New York, as the first State geologist for that well organized survey ; an 

 appointment which he accepted, entered upon, but soon abandoned because 

 that field was too far away from Amherst College — indeed, reason in plenty 7 ! 



Let us remind ourselves that Edward Hitchcock was a distinguished divine, 

 professor of natural theology and geology and president of this college in the 

 most uplifting days of the last century. This minister of the gospel was 

 boldly entering upon paths lined with harvest fields of truth which to his 

 contemporaries were fields of poison weeds. With equanimity he faced the 

 bigotry of common ignorance and the theological odium; but his students 

 heard and followed him gladly into those days of delightful and romantic ad- 

 venture over this countryside, when every hill and knoll, each stream and 

 gully, each glacial boulder and picturesque retreat, was baptized by the geol- 

 ogist-president and his classes with ceremonies of address and poem and song ; 

 Mounts Castor and Pollux, Mount Pleasant and Mount Pleasanter, Metta- 

 wampe and Aquilo, the Crescent, the Occident, the glacial stones Rock Rim- 

 mon, Kock Oreb, Rock Etam, and so on through a long list of natural monu- 

 ments — names which should never be permitted to disappear from the map of 

 Massachusetts, for they are storied monuments not only of her science and her 

 scenery, but of one of her great sons. 



If I pay this brief tribute to the eminent Hitchcock, it is only to intimate 



