24:6 Olituary, 



Obituaey. 



JosiAH DwiGHT Whititey, Profcssoi' of Geology and Metal- 

 lurgy at Harvard University, died on August 19th, at the age of 

 seventy-six years. A notice is deferred until another number. 



A. H. Green, Professor of Geology at the University of Ox- 

 ford, died recently at the age of sixty-three years. 



Professor Peter Collier, well knovt^n as an agricultural 

 chemist, died on June 29, 1896, at the age of sixty-one years. 

 He was graduated in arts at Yale College in 1861, and remained 

 in graduate studies of chemistry until 1867, receiving meanwhile 

 the degree of doctor of philosophy, and serving sometime as 

 assistant in chemistry. His studies were under both the elder 

 and the younger Silliman, and Johnson, Dana, and Brush, and 

 along with a goodly number of students since well known in 

 chemical science. From 1867 to 1877 he was Professor of Phy- 

 sics and Chemistry in the University of Vermont. During this 

 period he became enlisted in agricultural chemistry, leading in 

 farmers' institutes, writing in the public prints and the journals 

 of agriculture, and awakening attention to the applications of 

 science. He served as one of the scientific commissioners to the 

 Vienna Exposition in 1873. In 1877 he was appointed to the 

 post of Chief Chemist of the Department of Agriculture at 

 Washington, in which he was engaged six years. The annual 

 reports of the department for this period give account of his 

 investigations. He entered with great spirit into the problems 

 of sugar production, and of the cultivation of sorghum with the 

 fullest economy. In 1884 he published a comprehensive work on 

 this subject, with a critical examination of the methods of manu- 

 facturing sugar from sorghum, and of its use for fodder. In 1887 

 he took the post of Director of the New York State Agricultural 

 Experiment Station, at Geneva, N". Y., in which he was engaged 

 until he was attacked with the disease which terminated his life. 

 At Geneva he instituted, with the chemists of the Station, careful 

 chemical and practical experimentation upon cheese-making and 

 other questions of the products of milk, his laboratories being 

 well sustained for experimental work. Suffering a severe attack 

 of illness in the summer of 1895, he rallied sufficiently in Novem- 

 ber to bear the journey to Ann Arbor, and remained in this place, 

 drawing friends around him by his genial gifts of conversation, 

 until his death in June. Dr. Collier was a man of much execu- 

 tive force, having a wide acquaintance with scientific men, show- 

 ing himself a keen observer of the trend of scientific thought, and 

 holding the high regard of all who knew him. Of his family, 

 his wile, a sister of President James B. Angell, and a daughter 

 survive him. a. b. p. 



