482 PROCEEDINGS OF PHILADELPHIA MEETING. 



fame in the American revolution. He studied at Cortland Academy, 

 Homer, New York, and entered the class of 1867 at the University of 

 Michigan, where he graduated with the degree of ]\I. D. His interest in 

 science hegan while at Cortland Academy, where he formed the acquaint- 

 ance of Dr Caleb Green, and became through him deeply interested in 

 natural history, especially in geology and mineralogy. JNlany days were 

 spent by 3^oung Foote in excursions with Dr Green to })oints of scientific 

 interest in the neighboring districts of central New York. The tastes 

 thus developed led him on to his life-work. On graduating at Michigan 

 University he had won so high a rank in his scientific studies that he 

 was chosen out of a large class as an assistant in the University laboratory. 

 From this position he was called in a year to an assistant professorship 

 of chemistry in the loAva Agricultural College at Ames. Iowa. Here he 

 remained as a successful instructor for several years, with the exception 

 of one year spent in Europe, under leave of absence, when he studied 

 chemistry and mineralogy with the celebrated Hoffman in Berlin. In 

 1873 he visited Arkansas and brought to New York the first great quan- 

 tities of arkansite, nigrine, wavellite, (piartz and other minerals, and made 

 a i^rivate exhibit in the arsenal at Central Park. 



In 1875 he removed east and came to reside in Philadel])hia. Here he 

 organized his first public exhibition of minerals, for the Centennial Ex- 

 position of 1876, and has since made similar displays at nearly all the 

 great exhil)itions of the world, for which he received many medals and 

 awards. At the time of his death he had charge of the mineralogical 

 exhibit of Pennsylvania at Atlanta. He was accustomed to go south in 

 winter, as for twelve years he had suffered with pulmonary consumption, 

 but it was not supposed that his end was by any means near. 



Professor Foote, as we all know, was ])rominent not so much in pure 

 science as in the dissemination and extension of scientific interest ; he 

 was not specially an author of books, an investigator in the laboratory, 

 or a lecturer before public audiences, neither was he a great private col- 

 lector and amateur; yet in his own line of work he combined many of 

 these forms of influence, and has given an impetus and a status to min- 

 eralogy in America such as hardly any other man has been al)le to do. 



After leaving his professorshij) of chemistry in the Iowa Agricultural 

 College, he turned his attention to mineralogy as a business, and began a 

 system of collecting, exchanging, advertising and sale of well selected 

 and accurately labeled specimens that has made his name a " household 

 word " among all mineralogists in this country during the past twenty 

 years and widely known abroad. For this kind of work he was remark- 

 ably qualified ; he had the scientific knowledge and the business capacity 

 alike needed ; he possessed an indomitable will and a perseverance rarely 



