DANA CENTENARY &% 



that made by some of the elective class to the Tilly Foster iron mines at 

 Brewsters, New York. Those were old-style excursions, full of didactic con- 

 versation without much inductive work ; but "induction" was not the fad then. 

 The crowds of students, nevertheless, derived a world of benefit from their 

 intercourse with their famous teacher, whose encyclopedic fund of knowledge 

 was given as freely as air to the honest inquirer after truth, while his keen 

 questions were provocative of thought and instructive discussion. 



Professor Dana had no use for the trifler. AYe were examining the strongly 

 marked contact phenomena in the Triassic arkose of Mill Rock beside the trap 

 dike in the road at the foot of Lake Whitney, when one of my classmates sub- 

 mitted a piece of hard-burned brick with the question, "What do you think 

 that is?" Quick as a flash came the retort, "A foolish question by an imperti- 

 nent student." 



Judging from my own experience of three years. 1886-1889, Professor Dana 

 was extremely painstaking with his graduate students, particularly in book 

 work. He left us a good deal to our own devices in field work, not supervising 

 us as closely or pushing us as hard then as he would doubtless have done had 

 he been younger and stronger and less absorbed in his own studies and writ- 

 ing. Still, college geological departments thirty years ago were only just be- 

 ginning to develop the efficiency in field instruction thai they have since at- 

 tained, and the class-room method was carried too much into the seminar. 



In the intimate acquaintance with Professor Dana to which the graduate 

 student attained, the observations on men and methods let fall by the teacher 

 were invaluable in their effect on the student. Respecting the father of one 

 of the present geological faculty at Yale, Professor Dana remarked, when he 

 heard of his untimely death, "His death causes a distinct loss to geological 

 science. He was a keen observer, a painstaking collector of facts, a careful 

 man in statement, conservative in deductions, open-minded as to opposing 

 theories. He was trustworthy." Professor Dana could not tolerate another 

 geologist of wide fame whose conclusions, though brilliant, were based on 

 hasty and insufficient field study. "No man." said Dana, "can grasp the facts 

 of the metamorphic rocks and their theoretical bearing by looking at the 

 country as he drives along in a buggy." 



He was always opposed to dogmatism either in matter or manner. His mind 

 was ever open to the reception of new facts and new explanations of long 

 known facts. The mere circumstance that he had published a statement of 

 fact or theory did not lead him to cling to it against evidence. In the preface 

 to the third edition of the "System of Mineralogy" < 1850), which was the one 

 in which he abandoned the dual nomenclature for minerals which he had 

 elaborately worked out, he said: ". . . To change is always seeming fickle- 

 ness. But not to change with the advance of science is worse; it is persistence 

 in error. . . ." Throughout his long life this was his constant attitude of 

 mind and it was. naturally, reflected in his class-room work. This is perhaps 

 shown most strikingly in his teachings regarding evolution, from the early 

 days (Crustacea, 1854), when he advocated the doctrine Of the special crea- 

 tion of species, to the later period of his life, when he favored the view of 

 evolution through variation ("Manual of Geology," fourth edition. 1896). The 

 same characteristic was shown in his instructions to me as a graduate student 



when I began work under him on the Triassic trap dikes and sliced east of 



