1 32 • The American Geologist. "^"■^^' ^^^^ 
teaching in the schools with the labor of his farm. As a 
boy he grew stronger and worked as a coal miner ; from the 
income thus received he saved sufficient money to enable 
him to go to college. In 1880, he entered Grinnell College, 
Iowa, but soon left for Yale University, where in 1884 he 
was graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School. When 
a coal-miner his attention had been directed to geology and 
paleontology, and he then made a small collection of Car- 
boniferous fossils. These he brought to New Haven and 
showed to professor Brush, who later introduced him to 
professor Marsh, and thus was started his career in paleon- 
tology. He impressed upon Marsh that he wanted to col- 
lect and study fossils, and that he was willing to work at 
almost any salary. 
The graduating exercises hardly over, Hatcher started 
on a collecting tour for Marsh, June 25. 1884, for Long 
Island, Kansas, where he was for a time associated with 
Mr. Charles H. Sternberg. After a month's apprenticeship 
he began to collect independently and soon became the 
foremost collector of fossil vertebrates in this country. 
While with Marsh, from 1884 to 1893, nearly all his time 
was devoted to collecting. In 1884. he was in Kansas until 
late in November, then spent the winter months until the 
latter part of March around Wichita Falls, Texas, collect- 
ing Permian reptiles. Most of the year r885 was spent in 
a second tour about Long Island, Kansas. In 1886, he col- 
lected in the Pliocene and Oligocene formations, mostly 
neaV Chadron, Nebraska, sending to Yale carloads of mate- 
rial from the Brontotherium beds. This was his first great 
year as a collector and ever afterward new and fine speci- 
mens of mammals and reptiles came in in a steady stream. 
It will be many years before all these collections are work- 
ed out. 
It is probable that, owing to the strenuous way in 
which Hatcher worked in the field, his great summer's toil 
of 1886 taxed his strength too severely, for much of the 
winter of 1886-87 ^^ ^^y i" the hospital at New Haven suf- 
fering from inflammatory rheumatism. However, early in 
March. 1887, he was again back at Chadron for more Bron- 
totherium material. During the late autumn and winter 
