74 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALBANY MEETING 



Geology and head of the department. In this position he remained until 

 his death. 



He was Doctor Orton's personal choice. Those ontside of this great 

 university perhaps realized better even than those within its walls the 

 distinction thus conferred on Professor Prosser ; for Dana, Leconte, New- 

 berry, and Orton were for many years the most distinguished teachers of 

 geology in this country. The honor was worthily bestowed. He brought 

 to his new position the three essential qualifications of a successful 

 teacher — scholarly productivity, pedagogical skill and experience, and a 

 sterling character. 



He at once became identified with the reawakened geological survey of 

 Ohio and resumed active relations with the United States Geological 

 Survey. The latter relationship bore fruit ultimately in the publication 

 of the Columbus Folio in collaboration with Hubbard, Stauffer, Bow- 

 nocker, and Cumings. The direction of the affairs of a great and growing 

 university department materially increased the burden of administrative 

 work and of teaching duties over those to which he had been accustomed. 

 Nevertheless his productivity showed no decline. He entered with en- 

 thusiasm and with his accustomed skill and insight into the study of the 

 stratigraphy of the Ohio formations, and his studies in this new field are 

 comprised in a long series of papers and memoirs, of which the bulletin 

 on the Devonian and Mississippian formations of northeastern Ohio is 

 the most monumental. It is one of the most painstaking and one of the 

 most convincing pieces of detailed stratigraphic work ever done in 

 America. But he paid the penalty for his assiduous and unremitting 

 labors in the temporary breakdown of his health in 1906 — a contingency 

 against which his nearest friends had long warned him. I do not think 

 that he ever fully recovered from this collapse. He tugged manfully at 

 his burden, but never again with quite the same vigor. Though he was 

 spared to give ten more years to his university and to science, he was 

 eking out the failing strength of a tired man. 



As at Washburn and Union, he raised up about him at Ohio State 

 University a little group of enthusiastic students who are already making 

 themselves known in the field of geologic science. 



I desire now to pay tribute first to the man, as I liave known him for 

 many years, and second to the ideals of scholarly work as he exemplified 

 them. 



He was the gentlest of men and the most gentlemanly. As Doctor 

 Clarke has said of him : 



"There never was a more loyal, a more devoted, a more sensitive spirit. His 

 nttitnde of mind avjis puritnnic in its simplicity and in its practises, and, left 



