The Geological Society of A?nerica. — Hoi^ey. 87 
friendships, and prevented the geology of America from be- 
coming provincial. It has stimulated research and publica- 
tion, and has placed on record a great body of knowledge. 
The avowed purpose of the society, "The promotion of the 
science of geology in North America," has been carried out. 
and already the society's bulletin has given it a prominent 
place among the older geological societies of the world. The 
society began with 112 "original" fellows, and now numbers 
2}^^ in active membership. F"ive years ago the society had se- 
cured the adhesion of nearly all the active geologists of the 
continent, and since that time the membership has remained 
practically uniform, the losses being balanced by the elections. 
1 he geographical distribution of the present fellowship is very 
wide, thirty-five states and territories being represented be- 
sides the District of Columbia, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. 
Thirty-seven members live in the District of Columbia, twenty- 
nine in the state of New York, twenty in Canada, nineteen in 
Massachusetts, fifteen in Pennsylvania, eleven in Illinois, and 
ten in California. 
After the address of welcome, delivered by president Low. 
of Columbia, the necrology of the year was read, which con- 
sisted of a memorial of professor James Hall by professor John 
J. Stevenson, of New York University. With the hand of a 
life-long friend the speaker briefly sketched an outline of the 
life of the celebrated scientist to whose labors, carried on for 
more than sixty years, the State of New York owes more than 
its citizens appreciate. He told how young Hall spent his 
early boyhood and youth at Hingham, Mass., with very limited 
educational advantages; of his early love for natural science, 
as evidenced by his walking from Hingham to Boston and 
back, a distance of twenty-five miles, to attend each of the lec- 
tures delivered at the Lowell Institute by the elder Silliman; 
and of his struggles and success at the Rensselaer Polytechnic 
Institute at Troy, where he came under the influence and in- 
struction of that pioneer geologist, Amos Eaton. After his 
graduation Hall was packing his few earthly possessions prep- 
aratory to going he knew not where, when Eaton ofifered him 
a position as librarian of the Institute, thus, probably, saving 
him to the scientific world. Hall accepted the place, though 
it barely gave him subsistance, because it would enable him 
