BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 305 
search. Regarding his geological work,a competent critic—whose 
remarks have already been quoted—says :—“ It is to Professor 
Hutton we are indebted for the first really accurate work on the 
causes of the former extension of the glaciers in New Zealand ; 
his paper on this subject, contributed to the New Zealand Insti- 
tute in 1875, proved by a comparison of recent and fossil shells 
that this could only be due to greater elevation of the land and 
not to climatal changes. He has differed from the Geological 
Survey on several points, but some of these differences have 
arisen from misconceptions of the rocks referred to by local 
names. There yet remains, however, the important difference 
of opinion regarding the position of the break between the upper 
cretaceous and tertiary rocks, a difference which we yet hope 
to see settled by a convention in the field. At one time we 
feared that Professor Hutton had relinquished his geological 
researches, but he has lately once more resumed his investigations ; 
and we find in his later papers to the Geological Society and the 
New Zealand Institute, as well as in his masterly address last 
year as President of the Canterbury Philosophical Society, that 
he is still taking as lively an interest as ever in the geology of 
New Zealand.” 
As a teacher, Professor Hutten possesses the invaluable 
faculty of communicating a large share of his own enthusiasm to 
his students. In his methods of teaching he has all along shown 
considerable originality, and naturally being of a systematic turn 
of mind himself he attaches more importance to classification and 
systematization than is fashionable just now under the Huxleyan 
regime. From some practical experience of both modes of 
teaching, the writer is of opinion that Professor Hutton’s method 
is on the whole best fitted for giving students an interest in 
their work, as Huxley’s plan of teaching biology largely ignores 
the value of classification as an aid in instruction. 
In his public relations Professor Hutton shews the same 
enthusiasm in his own line of studies, and always succeeds in 
stirring up interest in natural science among those with whom 
he is thrown in contact. When in Dunedin he—as Hon. Sec- 
retary and afterwards President—raised the Otago Institute into 
a better position than it had ever occupied before ; and he has 
in Canterbury helped to put a good deal of enthusiasm into the 
Philosophical Society of that district. By inducing many a tyro 
to put his observations into writing and read them before one or 
other of these societies, he has been the means of bringing for- 
ward more than one of our younger naturalists. A warm friend, 
and one who abhors all sham and humbug, Prof. Hutton is yet 
one who has not always succeeded in working along smoothly 
with his associates. He is often too pungent a critic to please 
those from whom he differs in opinion, and perhaps he calls a 
spade a spade with too much emphasis for the vast majority of 
people, who frequently would rather have it called something 
else; and it may be this outspokenness of opinion, and perhaps 
want of that ambition which so frequently attaches even to 
