552 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PHILADELPHIA MEETING 



culties and dangers that opposed his advance or can rightly estimate the 

 dauntless courage and unrelenting energy which triumphed over the 

 most formidable obstacles, both material and moral. Wounds and sick- 

 ness, long weeks of helpless and agonizing pain, hardships of every kind, 

 represent but a few of the difficulties that he met and conquered. In 

 the long and glorious history of scientific exploration there are but few 

 chapters that tell of truer heroism and finer achievement than Hatcher's 

 life in Patagonia. 



When all the collections had been brought to Princeton and it was 

 seen what a mass of new and valuable material had been secured, 

 Hatcher conceived the plan of publishing the whole in a uniform series 

 of reports by the ablest specialists who could be induced to cooperate. 

 The only alternative would have been a crowd of more or less fragment- 

 ary and uncorrected papers scattered through many technical journals 

 and proceedings of societies. The liberality of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq., 

 has made possible the realization of this plan, and the " stately quartos " 

 of the Reports of the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia will 

 form a lasting monument to the memory of Hatcher, whose labors and 

 sacrifices they record. 



In February, 1900, Hatcher became curator of vertebrate paleontology 

 in the museum of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, a position in which 

 he remained till his death, on July 3, 1904. The same qualities that 

 had distinguished his earlier career continued to make him equal to his 

 new and larger duties and responsibilities. To him especially is due 

 the extremely rapid growth of the Pittsburg collections and their 

 remarkably high quality. 



Aside from the desolated household and the circle of bereaved friends, 

 the essential tragedy of Hatcher's early death lies in the fact that his 

 work had just begun. Though best known as a collector and the most 

 skillful and successful of collectors, he was very much more than that. 

 For 20 years he had been giving himself the most thorough training and 

 acquiring an experience of such magnitude and variety as falls to the 

 lot of few geologists. All his previous life had been but the seed time, 

 and just as the harvest was ripe for the sickle, the reaper was stricken 

 down. Owing to a modest self-distrust, his productive period began 

 relatively late, and his first paper was published after his removal to 

 Princeton ; but he gradually gained confidence with experience, and had 

 his life been spared he would surely have enriched science with a series 

 of notable contributions. For enthusiastic, self-sacrificing devotion, 

 unconquerable determination, and high achievement, we shall not soon 

 look upon his like again. 



