550 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PHILADELPHIA MEETING 



Of his wonderful activity and success as a collector, Schuchert has 

 remarked : 



"From 1884 to 1892 he sent in nearly 900 boxes of vertebrate material. As a 

 rule, these boxes were of large size, and one exceeded 3 tons in weight. This huge 

 box (about 10 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 6 feet deep), containing the largest known 

 skull of Triceratops, had to be lifted out of a ravine 50 feet deep and hauled to the 

 railroad over a trackless country and through streams for more than 40 miles. It 

 is no exaggeration to state that during the 20 years of Hatcher's paleontological 

 activity, he, with the assistance of a few field helpers, sent to the United States 

 National Museum, and to Yale, Princeton, and Carnegie museums not less than 

 1,500 boxes of fossils. This is a record that will stand unequaled — a work that 

 Hatcher loved — resulting in material part of which he hoped it would be his lot to 

 study. After Marsh's death the uncompleted Ceratopsia volume was assigned to 

 Hatcher by the United States Geological Survey. This gave him great gratifica- 

 tion, for he was thus enabled to associate his name, not only as a collector but also 

 as a student, with these great and curious beasts, all of which he had discovered 

 and taken up." 



Dr W. J. Holland, director of the Carnegie museum in Pittsburg, has 

 borne similar testimony to Hatcher's work as a collector : 



"Mr Hatcher's position as a paleontologist was unique. He is universally ad- 

 mitted by those most competent to pass judgment to have been the best and most 

 successful paleontological collector whom America has ever produced. In saying 

 this it may at once be admitted that he was in all probability the most successful 

 collector in his chosen domain who has ever lived. Professor Hatcher and those 

 associated with him under his control during the years of his activity in the field 

 assembled more important vertebrate fossils than have been assembled by any 

 other one man whose name is known in the records of paleontology. The larger 

 proportion of the choicest vertebrate fossils now in the Peabody museum at Yale 

 University, in the collection of the United States Geological Survey, in the museum 

 of Princeton University, and in the museum of the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburg 

 were collected by him. To a very large extent the American methods of collecting 

 such remains, which are now universally admitted to be the best methods known, 

 were the product of his experience in the field and of his careful thought. In a 

 letter just received bythe writer from Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, the Paleon- 

 tologist of the United States Geological Survey, he says, alluding to the death of 

 Professor Hatcher : ' I can hardly tell you how shocked and grieved I am. I had 

 often thought of the probability of Hatcher's death in the field when taking great 

 risks and entirely away from medical and surgical attendance, but of his death at 

 home I had not thought a moment. In his intense enthusiasm for science, and 

 the promotion of geology and paleontology, and the tremendous sacrifices he was 

 prepared to make, and had made, he was a truly rare and noble spirit — the sort of 

 man that is vastly appreciated in England and in Germany, but I fear very little 

 appreciated in America. His work as a collector was magnificent — probably the 

 greatest on record.' " 



While thus at work as a collector over an enormously wide range of 

 country and through almost the whole geological column from the Per- 



