360 Tlie American Geologist. Junu, loai 
OLIVER PAYSON HUBBARD. 
By E. O. HOVEY, New York. 
(Portrait.) 
Oliver Payson Hubbard, professor emeritus of chemistry 
and pharmacy at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., died 
of pneumonia, March 9, 1900, at his residence in New York 
City, in his ninety-first year, after an apparently painless ill- 
ness of but three days. 
Prof. liubbard was the son of Stephen and Zeruiah (Gros- 
venor) Hubbard, and was born at Pomfret, Conn., March 31, 
1809. His father was a merchant. The family removed to 
Rome, N. Y., in the fall of 181 1, where the young Oliver 
received his early education. He entered the sophomore 
class of Hamilton College in 1825, leaving the institution, 
however, at the end of the junior year in 1826, and going 
to Yale College, where he entered the junior class and was 
graduat-ed with honor in 1828. He taught in different schools 
for three years after graduation, and returned to Yale in 183 1 
to become assistant to Prof. Benjamin Silliman, in the chem- 
ical laboratory of the college. His association with Prof. 
Silliman continued for five years, during which he saw the 
development of many new ideas and methods in the young 
sciences of modern chemistry and mineralogy. 
While he was assistant in this laboratory, Hubbard aided 
Charles Goodyear in the experiments which resulted in the 
discovery of the process of vulcanizing India rubber, and in 
1833, in connection with Prof. Silliman, he made an investiga- 
tion at the request of the federal government into the capa- 
bilities of the United States for the "culture of the sugar cane 
and the manufacture of sugar." During his first year here, 
too, the first bottle of chloroform ever made was received from 
the discoverer, Dr. Samuel Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, N. 
Y. This was in 183 1, a year before the discovery of the same 
substance by Subeiran and by Liebig. Another incident to 
which Prof. Hubbard was fond of reverting was his presence 
at the accidental discovery of the anaesthetic properties of 
nitrous oxide, at Rome, N. Y.^ November 5, 182 1, when a boy 
companion mischievously inhaled an overdose of the new gas. 
It was in Prof. Silliman's laboratory that Hubbard develop- 
ed the interest in mineralogy and geology which remained 
