Chdvles Thomas Jackson. — JVoodtrorth. 85 
the sulphur was disengaged, and then, putting tlie snioking 
mass under the farmer's nose, asked him what that smelt of. 
'■Hell,'' was the somewhat hasty reply." 
Jackson was a genius. He had the inventive faculty; the 
habit of incessant investigation ; the capacity of getting 
tangible, fruitful results; and the ability to suggest success- 
ful expedients to others. Geologists think of him as a geolo- 
gist. He had other callings. At the end of his manual of 
Etherization of 1861, we find his card. 
CHARLES T. JACKSON, M. D., 
State Assayer, 
analytic and constjlting chemist, 
mineralogist and geologist. 
House and Office 32 Somerset Street, - Boston. 
Be Beaumont* wrote of him in 1852 as "bien connu par ses 
travaux sur la geologic de piusieurs parties de I'Amerique du 
nord et plus celebre encore par son important decouverte de 
I'Ktherization." In the public garden at Boston is a statue 
erected to the discoverer of the use of ether as an an;esthetic 
in surgery; but no name is inscribed thereon. That blank 
marble tells nothing of the mental anguish and of the closing 
days of the rival claimants for the honor which the distin- 
guished author of the Pentagonal Network unqualifiedly 
gives to his friend Jackson. The arguments of the famous 
'•ether controversy" are not germane to this sketch of Jack- 
son, the geologist. Jackson, it should be stated, was a claim- 
ant for priority of the discovery. The French academy of 
Sciences awarded him the honor. There were other claimants, 
Morton and AVells. It is stated that Dr. C. W. Long, a physi- 
cian in Georgia, performed surgical o{)ei-ations by the use of 
sulphuric ether four years before it was employed in Boston. 
Some of the writings on this subject of dispute are given in 
the appendix. 
Dr. Jackson occasionally gave lectures on geolog}', as at 
Lexington in 1855. These were generally delivered from 
carefully prepared manuscripts. From the manuscript of one 
of these lectures, we learn his views in regard to design in the 
* Notice sur les Systemes de Montagnes, p. 702. 
