1880 .] 
49 
[Crosby. 
L. S. BURBANK. 
In the death of Mr. Levi S. Burbank, which occurred at his 
home in Woburn, Mass., on the 20th of August, 1880, in the fifty- 
second year of his age, the Society has lost an active and valued 
member. Mr. Burbank was a native of Shutesbury, Mass. His 
education was gained in the district schools, and in the academy 
of Franklin County in this State ; and afterwards at the New 
England Normal Institute of Prof. William Russell, in Lancaster. 
It was here he met the elder Agassiz, then a lecturer in the 
Institute, from whom, as have so many others, he received his first 
impulse toward science. 
Mr. Burbank was best known as a successful and enthusiastic 
teacher of science ; and it was only during the last fifteen years 
of his life that his original investigations began to attract atten- 
tion. His career as a teacher began at the early age of eighteen, 
before his school days were over. From 1856 to 1858 he was an 
instructor in Paducah College, Kentucky. In 1858-9 he taught 
in Wake Forest College and Granville Female Seminary, North 
Carolina. 
It was while teaching in North Carolina that he made those 
careful and accurate observations on the extensive superficial 
decomposition of the rocks, and the formation soils and boulders 
in situ, so well exhibited in the southern states and in low lati- 
tudes generally, which he afterward turned to such good account 
in explaining the drift phenomena of more northern regions. 
Mr. Burbank married in 1859, and was soon after appointed 
President of Paducah College, remaining there until the breaking 
out of the rebellion in 1861. From 1861 to 1866 he taught miner- 
alogy and kindred subjects in the high schools in Lancaster, 
Athol, and Westboro’, in Mass.; and from the last mentioned 
date till 1872 he was at the head of the scientific department in 
the high school at Lowell. In 1872 he accepted .the position of 
Principal of Warren Academy at Woburn, making the academy 
a preparatory school for the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology and other scientific institutions. He remained at this 
post for five years ; and during these and the succeeding years he 
gave five courses of lectures on mineralogy and lithology in the 
Teachers’ School of Science, under the auspices of this Society. 
PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXI. 4 AUGUST, 1881 . 
