Sketcli of Charles Baker Adams. — Seely. 7 
Xear this time professor Adams in connection with his 
friend and Amherst classmate professor Alonzo Gray published 
a text book, Elements of Geology. A person familiar with his 
annual reports, recognizes that in illustration and in thoughts 
this book is the outcome of his geological work in Vermont. 
The deepening of the groove that professor Adams was 
impressing on the science of geology apparently stopped here. 
A suggestion as to the possible cause for his turning abruptly 
aside from contributing to geology is that he found in his new 
college associations one whom he looked upon as a master in 
die science, his old teacher president Hitchcock. With him he 
would not enter into competition. Whatever may have been 
the cause, he turned easily to another and a much loved field 
that was awaiting him, that of zoology. This he entered with 
the same enthusiasm that had characterized his work in Mid- 
dlebury, and the wider border, the mountains and valleys of 
Vermont. Here at Amherst as at Middlebury be put his fash- 
ioning hand on the Museum of Natural History to which he 
transmitted his personal collections accumulated in the Ver- 
mont survey. 
His more especial original study was in connection with 
the class Alollusca. The shells of Central America and the 
West Indies received his careful attention, and in pursuance 
of his object he made thither successive voyages. He visited 
Jamaica in 1844-45 and again in 1848-49, Panama, 1850-51, 
and St. Thomas, 1853-54. 
In some parts of his work Thomas Bland, Esq., an Eng- 
lish lawyer of New York City, and resident of Brooklyn, was 
in connection with him, and later Robert Swift a merchant of 
Philadelphia and St. Thomas. 
Frequent published papers came from his study and his 
pen and between 1849 anc ^ l ^>S l successive contributions to 
conchology appeared to the number of ten. These had been 
reax:l before the various scientific societies and were mostly 
printed in the Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural 
History. Various Molluscan collections largely the work of 
his own hands were examined and catalogs prepared and 
printed. In April, 1851, there appeared a catalog of the land 
and fresh water shells that inhabit Jamaica giving a number 
of land shells, 364, fresh water, 2$, in all 389. His great work 
