MEMOIR OF OLIVER MARCY 539 



unfortunately common in secondary schools and some socalled colleges 

 even today, on the assumption that although a good training is neces- 

 sary for teachers of philology or mathematics, any one can teach natural 

 science. When Doctor Marcy came in touch with geology he was at- 

 tracted by it, and later found in it his chief interest. 



After teaching at Wilbraham for sixteen years he was elected to a 

 professorship of natural science in Northwestern University. Condi- 

 tions were at that time in Evanston, as they were a hundred years ago 

 in Europe, and as they still are in small colleges in the United States, 

 in such a shape that one man had to deal with a multitude of subjects. 

 During the thirty-seven years in which Professor Marcy was connected 

 with Northwestern he taught natural theology, moral science, philosophy, 

 logic, mathematics, chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, mineralogy, and 

 geology. His own growth and development were contemporaneous with 

 that of the university. At the time of his election there were eight in- 

 structors and thirty-one students. At the time when he delivered his 

 last lecture, there were in the university two hundred and thirty mem- 

 bers of the faculty, instructing twenty-two hundred students, besides the 

 forty instructors and seven hundred students in the academy and school 

 of oratory that are conducted under the auspices of the university. 

 Today sixteen men are employed to present the subjects that Doctor 

 Marcy represented. 



Twice he was acting president of the university, serving the first time 

 for five years and the second time for part of a year. On the first occa- 

 sion he was at the height of his activity and influence and had an 

 unusual hold on the student bod} 7 . 



His geological work was begun and continued under unfavorable con- 

 ditions. His college had done little for him in the subject. Books were 

 few and costly. The man} 7 attractive and finely illustrated text books 

 on geology that are accessible to every student now were wanting. Many 

 of the works from which we draw inspiration and which we regard as 

 classics today had not been written. Mantell had not yet written his 

 " Medals of Creation;" Hugh Miller's "Testimony of the Rocks" did 

 not appear till 1856, and ; ' Old Red Sandstone " not until two years later. 

 Dana did not begin to bring out his geologies and mineralogies till Marcy 

 had been teaching a dozen years. Lyell's " Principles of Geology " had 

 passed through several editions, but seems hot to have come within 

 Marcy's reach, so that his early knowledge of the science was derived 

 almost wholly from Hitchcock's " Elementary Geology " and from Buck- 

 land's "Mineralogy and Geology," and both of these writers were at 

 that time catastrophists. 



Materials for illustrating geological facts were even more difficult of 



