Rathbun.] OOO [April 17, 



General Meeting. April 17, 1878. 



The President, Mr. T. T. Bouve, in the chair. Forty- 

 two persons present. 



The following paper was presented : — 



Sketch of the Life and Scientific Work of Professor 

 Charles Frederic Hartt, by Richard Rathbun, late 

 Assistant Geologist to the Geological Commission of 

 Brazil. 



In the death of Professor Charles Frederic Hartt, chief of the 

 Geological Commission of the Empire of Brazil, we recognize one 

 of the saddest losses science has recently suffered. 



Prof. Hartt was just in the prime of life, full of vigor, with 

 a mind already richly stored with the results of more than twenty 

 years of almost constant exploration and investigation. Had he been 

 advanced in years, with his labors nearly completed, although he 

 might have become more endeared to us through longer association 

 and friendship, yet we could then have consoled ourselves with the 

 thought that he had finished the work he had laid out for himself. 

 But such was not the case; he left the great work of his life merely 

 begun. His time was wholly given to the solution of some of the 

 most intricate problems in the fields of science and the arts, but 

 only here and there, in his short publications, do we catch glimpses 

 of the inexhaustible store of facts he had accumulated and theories 

 he had devised. 



He was at one time an active member of this Society, and a 

 student at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, and 

 nowhere did he have a larger circle of sympathetic friends, than 

 among his scientific associates at these two institutions, some of whom 

 were students with him under Prof. Agassiz. To these, and to his co- 

 workers everywhere, it would be needless for me to eulogize his char- 

 acter. He was hard-working, unselfish, and affectionate, never over- 

 bearing to his inferiors, but ever showing the same respect for those 

 laboring under him as for his equals. His deep sense of right caused 

 him to weigh the claims of others generally more fairly than his own, 

 and to his own loss. He was gifted to a wonderful degree with an 

 original and inventive mind ; while his early training laid a firm 

 foundation for a life of great usefulness. Thus richly endowed 

 he had started upon a most enviable career, and gave promise of 



