THE 
AMERICAN GEOLOGIST 
Vol. III. JANUARY, 1889. No. 1. 
ROLAND DUER IRVING. 
By President T. C. Chamberlin. 
Professor Irving was born in the city of New York, on the 
29th day of April, 1847. His father, the Rev. Pierre P. Irving, 
was a clergyman of the Episcopal church and a nephew of 
Washington Irving. His mother was a daughter of chief 
justice John Duer, of the supreme court of New York. Sprung 
thus from a family of literary talent on the one side and 
of judicial on the other, professor Irving inherited tastes 
and capabilities that especially fitted him for his subsequent 
work. His birth and early education in the metropolis of our 
country impressed upon him something of the breadth and 
complexity of its commercial, social and intellectual activities 
and gave to a mind naturally disposed to large and analytic 
conceptions a pronounced breadth and a discriminative habit. 
His youth was spent upon Staten Island, to which his father 
had removed in his second year. A lack of entire robustness of 
health, emphasized by frequent attacks of illness and a weak¬ 
ness of s^ght, interfered with systematic study and checked the 
indulgence of his passionate fondness of reading. His early 
training was therefore conducted mainly at home, his father 
and sisters being his chief instructors. It was only in his 12th 
year that he entered school. His dominant studies were classi¬ 
cal, but he was fortunate in falling under the instruction of a 
teacher whose frequent rambles with his pupils fostered a love 
for natural history. Young Roland became especially in¬ 
terested in the collection of the rocks and minerals that were 
accessible upon the island. The identification and classifica¬ 
tion of these may be looked upon as the inititation of his subse¬ 
quent scientific studies. In 1868 he entered the classical course 
of Columbia College. Forced by the condition of his eyes to 
suspend his studies in his sophomore year, he spent six months 
