70 21ie American Geohnjist. Febrnary, iso; 
his luboratoiy, on the second tloor of tlic soiitli wing of the 
reeent]_y completed McGraw Iniilding. At a small table, in a 
large room, surrounded by boxes, barrels and trays, sat the 
indefatigable worker. The wealth of a recent Brazilian ex- 
pedition demanded the attention of himself and his assistants. 
For special students there was. as yet, no place, not a chair 
nor a table. Furniture was. however, soon provided and in a 
few days work began in earnest. 
Ilartt had been a student of the elder Agassiz at Cambridge 
and had made his first trip to Brazil with that great teacher; 
naturally, therefore, it must be expected that his methods 
would be influenced by his training. That they were, I have 
no doubt. 
He subjected each student entering his laboratory to some 
preliminary test and in that way surrounded himself with the 
best material, for the less fortunate ones, if not told so di- 
rectly, soon found that the work of a geological laboratory 
was not their forte and retired. He seemed to feel that a busy 
man of science could ill afford to waste his energies on mate- 
rial which, at the outset, promised to bear no fruit. 
The instruction offered was individual, adapted largely to 
the taste or inclination of the student. Almost all the work 
was pahieontologica], consisting of the collection, identiiica- 
tion, description and drawing of fossils. This form of in- 
struction aroused in many of his students great interest and 
the}^ soon became familiar with the Middle Devonian fauna 
of the lake region of central New York. 
Different phases of work were developed on special occa- 
sions. For instance, among the then recent purchases of the 
university was a large collection of casts and models of cele- 
brated fossils, some of which, it must be admitted, were not 
as accurate as they should have been. To a person of Hartt's 
artistic instinct the defects were glaring. It is not surpris- 
ing, therefore, that, with the assistance of some of his stu- 
dents, he should have attempted to produce better and more 
accurate results. That his experiments were a great success 
is attested by the models of Eurypterus remipes and Asaphus 
(jujas still to be seen at Cornell. 
But the greatest source of our inspiration lay in the fact 
that our teacher carried on his private work in our presence. 
