IC-NRLF 
 
BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVHIWTY Of 
 CALIPOtNiA 
 
 EARTH 
 SC1FHCES 
 
^unttngton 
 Williams 
 
 r 
 
 Memorial b? f rienn0 
 for 
 
 1856-J894 
 
 1896 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 HIS LIFE IN BRIEF 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 Talcott Williams .9 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT, 
 
 Frederick Welh Williams 24 
 
 AT THE UTICA ACADEMY, 
 
 George C. Sawyer 67 
 
 LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE, 
 
 Benjamin Kendall Emerson 71 
 
 His WORK AS A PROFESSOR, 
 
 William Bullock Clark 77 
 
 His PUBLICATIONS, 
 
 Joseph Paxson Iddings. . . . . . 87 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY n 7 
 
 A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY, 
 
 Professor H. Rosenbusch. . . . .123 
 
 A COMMEMORATIVE SKETCH, 
 
 John M. Clarke. 134 
 
 MINUTES OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, . 148 
 
 M199337 
 
HIS LIFE IN BRIEF 
 
 iORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS, eldest 
 son of Robert Stanton and Abigail Obear 
 (Doolittle) Williams, born at Utica, New 
 York, January 28, 1856, descended from Robert 
 Williams of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in the eighth 
 generation. A. B., Amherst College, 1878 ; A. M., 
 1 88 1 ; Ph.D. summa cum laude, Heidelberg Uni- 
 versity, 1882; Fellow by courtesy in Johns Hopkins 
 University, 1883, Associate, 1883, Associate Pro- 
 fessor, 1885; Professor of Inorganic Geology, 1 892. 
 Married, September 15, 1886, Mary Clifton Wood, 
 daughter of David Phelps and Lora Celeste (Smith) 
 Wood, of Syracuse, N. Y. Their children were 
 Huntington Williams, born September 21, 1887, 
 Robert Wood Williams, born May 29, 1890, and 
 George Huntington Williams, born December 16, 
 1892. Died July 12, 1894, at Utica, New York. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TALCOTT WILLIAMS 
 
 HOUGH death rob life, love remains. Out 
 of love, this memorial has grown of a dear 
 life, cut short untimely, unfinished in all 
 but promise. Much as, at 38, George Huntington 
 Williams had done, his larger work lay before. Per- 
 formance and promise had grown rich and ripened 
 together. Both called for record. Both are recorded 
 here for those near by love and kin, for those who 
 seek the same science, and for the widening circle 
 of those who, finding his work, will ask what manner 
 of man he was who bore this fruit of work done, and 
 left with all near him faith that the work he had 
 done was but the wide door to the work he would 
 do. For them, his life brief but loved, short but 
 full, has been here set out in all its stages the 
 family life out of which he grew, bough worthy 
 of its bloom, his school and college days, his study 
 abroad, his work as teacher and searcher, as pro- 
 fessor and geologist, and the place he held in the 
 university of which he was a part, with the ordered 
 list of the works he published ; all written by those 
 near him, and, with him, to be near was to love. 
 9 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 He never ceased to learn. He early began to 
 teach. It was his fair lot to feel to the very end the 
 growth of a widening science, to which he added 
 and from which he daily drew new knowledge. For 
 twenty-nine years I knew him. 1 first saw him in 
 1865. I stood by his grave in 1894. Through all 
 these years, I now see, since death, the great in- 
 terpreter, gives the key, the same ardor lit all his 
 path. He grew. He did not change. The supreme 
 delight of acquiring and expanding knowledge was 
 his through all his days. The life of science is dear 
 to those who live it, and of worth to those who 
 but see it, because those who give their days to 
 knowledge, and to knowledge alone, feel through 
 all their years the thrill of a view that each day 
 widens and to which no day sets bounds. The 
 joy of school is theirs through all the work of life. 
 The sense of knowing to learn and learning to 
 know is, perhaps, the sweetest of earthly things. 
 When a man feeds on this joy for years, in the 
 high places of science, there comes inevitably into 
 his face that keen look of assured knowledge and 
 stable learning, bright as the cloudless sky, which 
 we are beginning to recognize in the greater men 
 of science ; and with this look his years and his 
 work were gracing a face which, to me at least, 
 approached continually nearer and nearer to that 
 sense of assured knowledge which is power, and 
 growing power which is insight, and insight which 
 is the herald and promise of immortal discovery. 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 But whether this was to be his lot or not was 
 a little thing to him by the side of the daily 
 ardor which burnt like a flame through all his 
 life, and which all his life fed. His serene joy in 
 enlarging knowledge is the common lot of all 
 who seek science in sincerity. Her visible gains 
 are but few. This she pours in a flood to all who 
 seek her and follow her truth. But while others 
 labor to enter into their joy and pay with a great 
 price for its freedom, he was free-born. His mind 
 opened the problem to which it was addressed, as 
 the key the lock. All who knew his work knew 
 that it was to him the gladness of life, dear beyond 
 pleasure and more lovely than all the delights of 
 men. But even with this, there are for most wrench 
 and strife before they gain the work of their choice 
 and the work for which they are chosen among 
 men. Most of all is this true of pure science, which 
 is a vocation rare in its inspiration and rarer still 
 in the free opportunity to heed it. The open pref- 
 erences of life are for the recognized callings, and 
 most parents are swayed by these preferences. 
 Few men begin with the scientific impulse, which 
 is but an appetite for exact knowledge and a de- 
 sire to record the same. Instead, the impulse de- 
 velops by degrees and dawns with development. 
 Fewer men still find those about them in their 
 earliest years anxious to aid this impulse and foster 
 it. The smooth charm of his life was that its 
 stream ran without a ripple. In the even current 
 ii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 of his days, bank and stream seemed made for 
 one another. 
 
 He was a boy of ten when, in the winter of 
 1865-66, I saw him for some weeks together. 
 Books were already his care. He had begun the 
 careful record of all that interested him which was 
 to mark his life. He had the unrivaled advantage 
 of living in the atmosphere and feeling the influence 
 of a library which expanded with the intellectual 
 life of the family in which it grew, and whose 
 members fed upon its growth. In this bookish 
 perspective, ever widening and ever responding to 
 his needs, in gracious surroundings which bespoke 
 wide family relations, which made distant lands 
 near and the life and work of other peoples a part 
 of the daily environment of his own life and work, 
 there was a singular and explicit preparation and 
 provision of the breadth of view which made his 
 least publication relative, and to the end saved a 
 man devoted to a specialty from ever being, in the 
 narrower sense of the word, a specialist. All un- 
 knowing, the fine and gentle texture of his mind 
 took its first form and received its earliest bent 
 under an unconscious training which made the 
 boy of ten feel the world without as well as within 
 books, and later prevented the man from ever for- 
 getting the one in science or being lost to true 
 science in the other. 
 
 While I saw him from time to time, five years 
 passed before, in the winter of 1870-71, we were 
 12 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 once more for weeks together. His mind, receptive 
 before, had now taken the bent of research and in- 
 quiry. He had made a very considerable progress 
 in the Williams Genealogy, which he published at 
 an age when few men have associated their names 
 with a title-page which stands for so much pa- 
 tient and accurate research. Heraldry is as near to 
 useless learning as any existing ; but in his training 
 nothing was useless. Thanks to the parental 
 diligence, which spared no aid in books where there 
 was a wish to read, he had carried a knowledge 
 already begun in its rudiments five years before 
 farther than do most amateurs. Out of his inter- 
 est in coat-armor, he developed for himself, with 
 little training but an infinite patience, a gift in il- 
 lumination which was schooling hand and eye to 
 the firm outlines, the accurate draughtsmanship 
 and the trained color sense which distinguished 
 his scientific drawings in years more mature. So 
 completely had the side of life ruled by pencil and 
 brush won him, that all his outlook and ambition 
 were towards some of the callings given to applied 
 art. For the next six or eight years his reading 
 ran to architecture and kindred subjects. He was 
 called from the too early devotion to the scientific 
 problem which narrows men who enter its strait 
 and narrow path before they have learned how 
 broad life is, and how much goes to make up its 
 work outside of science. 
 
 He entered college equipped as well as fitted. 
 
 13 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 He was still fortunately young. Young he was to 
 the end. Young he would have been had long 
 years been his. He had ever the golden gift 
 of that re-creating ardor which made him always 
 younger than the last new fact he was about to 
 lay bare. In his laboratory he found always the 
 gift of perpetual youth in perpetual research. But 
 in 1874, when I saw him just entering college and 
 yearned over him with the love and fond hope 
 which, I verily believe, he awoke for all the years 
 of his tutelage in every older man who saw him 
 as succeeding pages abundantly bear witness 
 he had every charm. Ardent, full of enthusiasm, 
 singularly facile in all social relations, carrying the 
 blameless life which is the precious fruit of our 
 wholesome American atmosphere, apt to learn, 
 able to teach, responding to all the responsibilities 
 of college and appreciating to the full all its priv- 
 ileges, of the many I have seen enter college 
 there has been none from whom one hoped more, 
 and none who filled fuller the measure of hope. 
 
 To his junior year his course ran eventless. He 
 grew and expanded. He was loved. Term by 
 term I heard of his advance, of the place he held, 
 the influence he wielded, the progress he made 
 and the broad swath he was cutting through the 
 studies of the class-room and the affection of his 
 classmates. His first touch of science in chem- 
 istry visibly moved him ; but in the first two 
 years of the Amherst course of twenty years ago 
 14 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 there was little likely to arouse a mind whose 
 major response was neither to the letters of the 
 past nor to the literature of the present. To both 
 of these he gave the faithful attention of the stu- 
 dent, but from them he received training rather 
 than inspiration. It was not until his third year 
 that he found in geology his intellectual conver- 
 sion, the sudden turning together of all energy, 
 faculty, and ability into the chosen channel of his 
 life. His instructor in geology, Professor Benja- 
 min Kendall Emerson, whose sketch of his pupil 
 succeeds, has the gift of communication the 
 power which enables a teacher to impart not only 
 his learning, but his enthusiasm. His teaching, 
 flooded over the sensitive plate of the pupil's mind, 
 unerringly develops the geologist in the one or 
 two in each successive class who, having uncon- 
 sciously elected Professor Emerson's course in ge- 
 ology, find that they have made sure their calling 
 and relation for life. From the start, far earlier 
 than my cousin, I knew that my old professor felt 
 that among the many for whom he had stood 
 sponsor in his science there was none who so 
 awoke his love or his prophecy, who was dearer 
 to him as a pupil, or in whom he felt a higher 
 pride as a professor. However numerous may be 
 a professor's pupils, it cannot often occur that there 
 passes through his hands a student of winning 
 manners, of social aptitude, of a broad background 
 of cultivation, of high intellectual powers, of un- 
 15 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 wearied industry, and of those special trained gifts 
 of eye and hand which are, if not indispensable to 
 the geologist, of incalculable advantage in facilitat- 
 ing and rendering accurate, pleasing, and instruc- 
 tive the record of his research and discovery. 
 
 His college work in geology was succeeded by a 
 resident year under Professor Emerson's personal 
 direction, devoted principally to field-work. The 
 substantive results of this year were not great, but 
 again fortune favored his preparation for life. Most 
 men begin their post-graduate study in geology, 
 given almost altogether to lectures and the labora- 
 tory, with little practical acquaintance with the 
 fashion in which their problems present themselves 
 in the open field of nature. In his professional 
 life, given to a specialty in which the microscope 
 is the chief and, to some specialists, almost the 
 exclusive instrument of research, both his ob- 
 servation and his conclusions were balanced and 
 directed by the circumstance that a most unusual 
 share of his preparation had been given to the field. 
 To the end he remained a man untiring in his de- 
 votion to investigation upon the ground, to the at- 
 tack and mastery of geological problems in the first 
 and most obscure shape in which they can present 
 themselves, not in the laboratory, but in nature. 
 Nor was it the least result of both the tradition and 
 training of geology in Amherst College that, more 
 than most men of the new school, he laid the ter- 
 ritory about the university in which he did his 
 16 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 work under immediate and illustrative tribute, 
 both in its geological and topographical treatment, 
 a use which his personal tact made of value to the 
 city in which his work lay, as well as to the classes 
 over which he presided. At the end, alas, the 
 end, of his professional labors, when I last saw 
 him, his eye still bright with all the future and rich 
 with all the past of his work, he attributed what 
 he modestly deemed his most important original 
 achievement thus far, his identification of the early 
 volcanic areas in the South Mountain, to his train- 
 ing in field work as well as in the laboratory re- 
 search of the petrographer. 
 
 It was not by accident the frequent contact 
 of two busy men enamored of their work is never 
 quite that that I saw him for a season before he 
 went to Europe in 1879, and again on his return 
 in 1882. Within the natural limits of the stage 
 and season he had now reached, he went, all an- 
 ticipation ; he came back, all achievement. The 
 boy whom I saw in Washington in 1879 was ^ u ^ 
 of charm, whose manifold attraction for others of 
 all ages and attainments I then first witnessed, 
 but neither ambition nor aspiration was defined. 
 He had so grown. The balance of him was so 
 just, so true, and so visible, he was so well in 
 hand and his mind was so well trained and 
 equipped that I felt he might walk anywhere, but 
 whither, neither he nor I knew. Emerson has 
 somewhere said that to youthful address all doors 
 3 17 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 open, and I remember as I left him, after his brief 
 stay, I thought of the saying, and felt that the five 
 or ten years which most men expend in the busi- 
 ness of becoming known would for him be abridged 
 to a span by his ready address, as they were. If 
 all paths seemed open to him when he left to go 
 abroad, when he came back the one path in which 
 he had set his feet seemed one long opening. He 
 had, when he returned, ripened with a sense of 
 definite scholastic achievement, though he felt the 
 panic which besets many men on the threshold 
 when they know that they have with infinite pa- 
 tience forged a key to fit one lock and only one ; 
 but, as always happens to a man who fits himself 
 thoroughly, completely, and without exception for 
 some one place, that one place found him, sought 
 him, and, as he wrote in one of the glad outbursts 
 which sounded from time to time on the tense 
 thread of a life on which so much was strung, if 
 he had been asked to prepare a place for himself, 
 he could not have devised one more fitted for the 
 precise work he wished to do and the field he longed 
 to fill than the one offered to him without asking, 
 because he alone had fitted himself so as to have 
 the right of the worthiest to seek it. 
 
 Of his professional and scientific labors in Johns 
 Hopkins University, where he passed twelve fruit- 
 ful and happy years, men better trained and more 
 competent speak in the pages which follow. Alike 
 in his science and in the university he was but 
 it 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 one of many whose general devotion he shared, 
 and who like him brought to their several prob- 
 lems that mingling of personal ardor and imper- 
 sonal enthusiasm, that love of learning for its 
 own sake, and longing for discovery for his own, 
 which marks the best type of the men of re- 
 search to-day. In the fond partiality of a kinsman 
 and the dear desire of a friend, I have no wish in 
 this brief sketch to do more than set his life in 
 some of its wider relations, and emphasize not less 
 the things he shared with others than those which 
 a thrice happy fortune and a gracious parentage 
 and providence had given him as an unique and 
 incommunicable possession. 
 
 Much that was best in his life was but part of 
 the privilege and freedom enjoyed by the modern 
 priesthood of science, in which he had won his 
 place. The scientific investigator of to-day is no 
 longer isolated from active life, no longer a closet 
 worker, no longer a man immersed in knowledge 
 and apart from other men. The entire fabric and 
 framework of society is under tribute to him, and 
 he enjoys the estimable privilege of sharing the 
 labors and feeling the contact of a guild of work- 
 ers whose boundaries are not those of nations but 
 of knowledge. Through the twelve years in 
 which he labored in his chosen province years 
 which, properly considered, had brought him only 
 to the threshhold of the true work before him in 
 the final determination of the character of conti- 
 
 19 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 nental origin he had for his horizon the world- 
 field of petrography. The laboratory work of the 
 winter was succeeded by the excursions of the 
 summer. A bulky monograph recorded his work 
 in the Lake Superior region, a rapid excursion gave 
 him a view of the broader conditions of the geology 
 of the continent, associated problems in northern 
 Europe required several personal visits, and the 
 perplexing and hitherto unsolved problems of the 
 continental rim, to which he was devoting his 
 life-work, were the subject of repeated trips from 
 end to end, of incessant field investigation, and 
 of a score or more of associated papers. All this 
 of travel, of contact, of acquaintance, and of study 
 in the field, in the library, and in the laboratory, 
 while he was organizing a university department 
 of geology, carrying on a teacher's toil, and at 
 Washington, at Annapolis, and at Baltimore com- 
 ing in close touch with geology where it affected 
 national, state, and civic development. 
 
 Laboring not far from him, I heard through every 
 year of his work from himself, from others, and, 
 as time wore on and his horizon extended, from 
 the wider echoes of the scientific world. He pub- 
 lished indefatigably, as his bibliography abundantly 
 shows. His pupils passed rapidly from his hands 
 to the foremost places in the calling where he so 
 easily led. To scientific power he added admin- 
 istrative ability, and his department grew symmet- 
 rically and logically under his hands. It was but 
 
 20 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 a few weeks before death silenced all his requests 
 in its behalf that a trustee of the University told 
 me that he had never made a request which had 
 been denied. The broad and symmetrical training 
 which I have already but haltingly described, which 
 began in the home in which he was born and con- 
 tinued in the home of which he was the head, 
 gave to his platform utterances a grace and force 
 denied to all but those who wed sympathy to 
 science and bring something more to their lectures 
 than their learning. He came in his own person, 
 and through a happy union which reinforced all 
 his own endeavor with aid and association supple- 
 menting and enriching his own high social powers, 
 to stand as that rare type, a man whom learning 
 has not spoiled for life and whose life enriches his 
 learning. This happy harmony between the main 
 aim of a life and its setting was his in part from 
 his own powers, aptitude, and training ; but its 
 perfect adaptation had its root in mutual interest 
 and a mutual love, which infinitely dignify a home 
 by making it, not the retreat of a weary man, but 
 the scene of his best work and the source of daily 
 inspiration, aid, sympathy, and support. In the 
 closely-woven texture of his life no seam opened 
 between his hours in his laboratory and his hours 
 in his home. The personal and social influence 
 which every true teacher longs to exert and im- 
 press on the whole man of his pupil was easily 
 possible to him when his classes were equally at 
 21 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 home in his class-room and his house. To the 
 latter nothing in his work was alien, and he went 
 to his class-room and laboratory rich in the con- 
 sciousness that he had given his whole life to sci- 
 ence, and found another to share every sacrifice, 
 and by personal charm and patient attention to en- 
 rich life for him with wide social relations which 
 sometimes ensnare, but which for him only illu- 
 minated labors of administration and routine. 
 Dowered with so much else, there came to him 
 the dear delights of fatherhood and the daily joy 
 of children. On all sides and in all channels his 
 life spread and flowed in streams unbroken and 
 unruffled, until the rounded training of his youth 
 seemed in whole and in part to sphere itself in 
 the rounded activities of maturity, with no im- 
 pulse thwarted, no power unused, and no bliss 
 untasted. 
 
 These and his growing distinction and widen- 
 ing reputation were the just pride of those to 
 whom he was dear ; but dear as these are, it is not 
 of these, but of him, I love most to think, now 
 that he is gone. I seem rather to see as the cen- 
 tral light of his life that serene joy in enlarging 
 knowledge which never failed, and never lit any 
 path but that of pure science. Early he told me 
 he had declined, and to the end would decline, 
 any commercial inquiry or investigation. And 
 with this serene joy with which his face shone 
 as the years went on, it became less the ruling 
 22 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 passion of life than his very life itself was his 
 devotion to the simple and exact truth, his 
 yearning desire to add to it, his sense of its maj- 
 esty, his comprehension of the central fact that so 
 long as truth was unshrinkingly followed all the 
 outer development which he had once sought in 
 poetry and in letters would be added unto the 
 man who did his entire and complete duty by 
 the kingdom of nature. As I saw this concep- 
 tion gather and grow and take force, steadying 
 his ambition, directing his efforts, preserving the 
 lofty integrity of his soul and winging it on to 
 flights higher and higher, I looked to see in 
 those rich years which lay before him some great 
 conquest of science which would write his name 
 with the few whose memory is not buried in the 
 vast pile of increasing knowledge, but whose fame 
 gilds the high and unapproachable peaks of dis- 
 covery. It was not to be. He is gone. 
 
 The unfinished window in Aladdin's palace 
 unfinished must remain. 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 FREDERICK WELLS WILLIAMS 
 
 the first chapter of an " Autobiography," 
 dated December, 1867, the juvenile au- 
 thor informs us that he was "born on 
 the 28th of January 1856 at eleven o'clock mon- 
 day morning," and, after a few details as to his 
 parents, adds that this event occurred at "No. 48 
 Broad Street in a large house. After I had lived 
 there about a year my Father removed to board at 
 the National Hotel kept by Mrs. Green in April 
 1857 in the summer my mother and I went to 
 the seashore and stayed untill September. I was 
 named after my step-uncle George Huntington 
 Williams. He died when he was about nineteen 
 years old in 1855 one year before I was born. 
 When I was about five years old I could recite to 
 memory A Visit from Saint Nnicholas with out 
 a mistake." The removal of the family in Janu- 
 ary, 1863, to Hopper Street marks a period of so- 
 cial readjustment in Utica, when the old streets of 
 the lower town were gradually deserted for those 
 on the heights near upper Genesee Street. The 
 change was in every way a happy one for the three 
 24 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 little children who now made up the family, afford- 
 ing them a more convenient house as well as a 
 larger playground ; and about this house, though 
 now much altered and enlarged, cluster to-day the 
 associations not only of those who have grown up 
 in it, but of the wider family group to whom it has 
 served for the space of a generation as a common 
 focus and center. 
 
 It may seem to others a trivial affair, but I can 
 not refrain from quoting the fourth chapter of this 
 precious page of childhood, entitled, "My First 
 Dog," revealing, as it does, the boy's early sense 
 of fitness and friendship in his regret at the loss of 
 a likely companion. " About a year before we 
 moved on Hopper St. (the account runs), father 
 got me a little tanterria dog We named him 
 Floy I had a nice little collar for him with my 
 name engraved upon it. I had him in the street 
 and a man offered me four dollars for him I said 
 I would not do it and the next day father gave him 
 a way about two weeks after I got him." Possi- 
 bly his brief ownership of this dog and of another 
 described in the concluding chapter of the autobi- 
 ography may explain the incident recounted in 
 Chapter III. of a "Life of Washington/' written 
 during the same year. I copy this interesting frag- 
 ment, as I do the others, with no attempt to 
 restrain the author's freedom in the matter of or- 
 thography: "In January 1759 Washington was 
 maried to Mrs. Marther Custis, a widdow with 
 4 25 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 two chirldren, and went to live with her on the 
 estate at mount Vernon. Washington was very 
 fond of hunting, he had a large number of dog's 
 kept for this purtoose in kennels. If there were 
 anny strif among the dogs, the men who took care 
 of them would ring a bell and then they were 
 quiet for they knew if they were not the whip 
 would follow." 
 
 Another indication of literary activity that 
 marked his eleventh year is referred to in the 
 first letter I ever received from him, beginning 
 with a boy's off-hand frankness : "I never saw 
 you but want to get acquainted with you and as 
 you are away off in China I thought that best way 
 to do it would be to write you a letter, and if 
 you answer, as I hope you will I want you to tell 
 me what the little boys play in China. Father 
 showed me," he continues in this tiny epistle, 
 which initiated our life-long correspondence, "a 
 journal that your Father kept when he was about 
 my age, and I thought that it would be a good plan 
 to keep one to. I have used a Diary that I got for 
 Christmas and write a little every day." The diary 
 not unlikely passed to the limbo to which our good 
 resolutions at all times are apt to depart, but its 
 mention here shows a trait that was already strong 
 within him. This mental alertness was doubtless 
 intensified by his rather delicate health, the result, it 
 was then thought, of a serious trouble with his right 
 knee, which necessitated treatment when he was 
 26 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 four years old in Dr. Mann's celebrated institution in 
 New York. It was many years, indeed, before he 
 was able to use the leg with entire confidence, and 
 the energies that in other children escape by normal 
 sports and exercise, found expression in his case in 
 eager and active intellectual pursuits. But what- 
 ever his deprivations in this respect, the golden 
 gift of a sunny disposition was his from earliest in- 
 fancy. No memories of fretfulness or disappoint- 
 ment are to be found in these first bright years of 
 life. The bountiful suggestions of a quick and 
 precocious brain developed by the wholesome in- 
 fluences of home were always enough to chase 
 away the ennui that besets many children, and 
 whether studying the block-alphabet or fighting 
 Indians made of bits of colored cloth and a bunch 
 of turkey-feathers, the boy was sure to be busy 
 and happy wherever found. 
 
 At the age of four or five the scope of his enjoy- 
 ment was infinitely expanded by learning to read, 
 and after this it was only necessary to suggest an 
 interesting book to render him perfectly contented. 
 If anything seemed better to him than reading it 
 was, perhaps, the rare joy of expounding his 
 newly acquired information to the other children, 
 or improvising some dramatic representation of 
 the subject. Sometimes this desire to develop in 
 a realistic fashion what he had read or heard re- 
 sulted in very clever toys. By means of his scis- 
 sors and cardboard he cut out a small army of 
 27 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 soldiers, fastened upright upon firm bases and ap- 
 propriately colored, to which were gradually added 
 a camp equipage, tents, wagons, horses, and the 
 rest, all highly satisfactory to his keen instinct for 
 order and form. On the death of a little sister he 
 made a drawing of her baby shoes for his mother, 
 a touching instance of a sensibility that he seldom 
 allowed others to witness, but which was a very 
 real part of his nature. A few years later, when 
 he was thirteen, he had so improved his talent for 
 drawing and coloring as to be able to decorate 
 note-paper with crests and monograms, and with 
 the money earned in this way he bought a silver 
 watch perhaps the proudest achievement of his 
 life. 
 
 I have spoken of the lad's avidity in reading, and 
 its mention recalls the admirable library collected 
 by his father, largely with reference to the needs 
 and interests of a group of growing children. With- 
 out the stimulus of this copious and ever-increas- 
 ing store it is hard to imagine that this eager mind 
 could have developed quite so broadly and fully. 
 Not only was there always plenty to read, but the 
 reading was sure to be of the right sort. The 
 single condition exacted was that a book once be- 
 gun must be finished before another could be com- 
 menced ; and often indeed a new volume brought 
 both father and son into that closer intimacy which 
 springs from a common study, ripening the 
 younger by contact with the maturer mind. The 
 28 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 library thus formed was in no sense a specialist's 
 collection, but an assortment of works on subjects 
 of such general interest as to tempt any child's 
 attention, and excite by their presence about him 
 an appetite for sound culture. In the case of an 
 unusually strenuous boy like George the predilec- 
 tion needed no quickening, but there was danger 
 lest harm might come from the very eagerness 
 of his desire and the catholicity of his taste. He 
 learned, however, to read thoroughly rather than 
 too widely, and a book once enjoyed was apt to 
 be read again and again. It is told of him in his 
 eighth year that, having completed Bulfmch's " The 
 Age of Fable," he immediately began it once 
 more. At finishing it a second time he was heard 
 to declare that, being the best book he had ever 
 read, he did n't see how he could do better than 
 read it a third time, which he promptly did. 
 
 We have seen something of his assiduity in 
 writing from excerpts made from a first volume of 
 his " Works" indited in an old bank-book at the 
 age of eleven. About this time he became inter- 
 ested in tracing out certain of his family relation- 
 ships, and begging a suitable blank-book as the 
 present most earnestly desired at Christmas, he 
 forthwith began writing a somewhat detailed 
 genealogy upon a system of his own. This per- 
 formance is chiefly remarkable because of the rare- 
 ness of a child's interest in this kind of investigation. 
 His zest in this instance never failed him, and the 
 29 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 study of his family history was an engrossing ob- 
 ject of attention through his life. The blank-book 
 begun in 1868 was printed in the " New England 
 Genealogical and Historical Register/' and after- 
 ward published in pamphlet form in 1879. His 
 investigations in genealogy naturally brought him 
 to an examination of the subject of heraldry, upon 
 which by the end of his fourteenth year he had 
 studied up all the works he could procure, thus 
 rendering himself a local authority in this obscure 
 topic, and the object of amused and delighted com- 
 ment among his father's friends. 
 
 Other interests which absorbed his boyish at- 
 tention in those days were a collection of auto- 
 graphs and a postage-stamp album, both carried 
 on for many years with an ardor that indicates his 
 inheritance in a family notable for its acquisitive- 
 ness in things of purely intellectual concern. In 
 general it might be truly said of his formative 
 period that nothing came amiss to this omnivorous 
 little collector, whose bedroom might soon have 
 become a congestion of undetermined miscellany 
 had it not been for his instinctive orderliness, which 
 kept them all arranged with scrupulous care. As 
 an inkling of his later taste the following passage 
 from a letter of November, 1868, is suggestive: 
 " I am getting together a cabinet now in which I 
 have got the minerals Uncle George had in his 
 cabinet, a slab from Ninevah that Uncle Fred sent 
 etc. Last Saturday Willie Abbott and 1 went up 
 
 30 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 to Sulphur Springs to dig for tralobites. I got 
 some heads and an Athosorus we took with us 
 two hammers and a small crowbar." This is the 
 only reference to a cabinet which kept its place in 
 his room until the removal to college, but which 
 was not regarded at that time with greater curios- 
 ity or sympathy than his other hobbies. 
 
 His schooling began at the age of nine in the 
 public schools of Utica, where he continued until 
 he was fitted for college. He brought to his 
 classes the same enthusiastic interest which he 
 showed in everything he did, and it will be readily 
 inferred that he stood easily first in his division. 
 When in the Advanced School the institution was 
 visited by the inventor of an " Art to Remember 
 Dates," who selected George as a likely subject to 
 acquire his method and exemplify it in public. The 
 boy cheerfully lent himself to the experiment, and 
 showed off so well as to astonish the listeners and 
 gain some credit for the system. But when the 
 school principal, Mr. Harrington, was afterward 
 asked by an anxious parent whether her son 
 should be instructed by the new method, she was 
 told that George Williams' exhibition was no proof 
 whatever of its merit, as all the school knew he 
 could have answered any of the questions put to 
 him, method or no method. Doubtless the prin- 
 cipal was right in this instance, for 1 never heard 
 George allude to any mind-saving contrivance for 
 capturing and retaining dates. The incident is 
 31 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 suggestive because it shows the reputation which 
 he had acquired among teachers and schoolmates 
 as a boy of fifteen. He was invariably singled out 
 as a " show scholar," and it speaks much for his 
 natural good sense that the prominence to which 
 he attained at school did not make him insufferably 
 conceited. Yet, though naturally proud of his 
 achievements, he was at that time and ever after- 
 ward singularly free from boasting, taking his 
 honors modestly enough, and forgetting them at 
 once in the zeal of preparing for a new effort. 
 
 This trait of constant intellectual wakefulness 
 was a saving grace at all times, leading him into 
 many ingenious occupations, as we have seen, 
 when he was a little boy and kept by his infirmity 
 from active exercise. But its influence in the de- 
 velopment of his character was yet more impor- 
 tant, since by keeping his mind busy it made it 
 sane and wholesome. To say that he loved his 
 work seems trite and commonplace to those who 
 recall the real ecstasy of his devotion to tasks that 
 absorbed him. Even in the primary school, dur- 
 ing those trying weeks when the freedom of home 
 life is first exchanged for the irksome routine of a 
 scholar's desk, we find the lessons to him one 
 long delight, A day in which he is kept home is 
 a lost day, and some companion must come and 
 tell him all that happened there, and what new 
 thing was learned. In this healthy ferment of the 
 mind there was no room for the vain-glory of 
 32 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 those who play the game of life only for its stakes, 
 and plume themselves after each success obtained. 
 With him a prize secured only meant a step to the 
 next, and healthy ambition swallowed up pride in 
 this continual effort after new laurels. Occupa- 
 tion, moreover, had much to do in preserving him 
 from those fits of depression and moodiness to 
 which most of us are subject ; and the almost un- 
 varying cheerfulness of his disposition won him 
 a popularity among his fellows that is not com- 
 monly the lot of clever boys who are easily first 
 in their classes. It may be, too, that an entire 
 freedom from the sarcastic in his nature saved 
 him from those efforts of caustic wit that, de- 
 lightful though they may be to some, are apt 
 to be exercised only at the price of our friend- 
 ships. . . . 
 
 It was as mere boys that we first came together, 
 and under the magnetic sway of his quick mind 
 our intimacy soon ripened. I was with him in Utica 
 during only one year, after which I moved away ; 
 and since it is my design to confine this sketch 
 chiefly to personal recollections and the estimate 
 based upon them, I need not dwell longer upon his 
 career at school. Thereafter it was in our vaca- 
 tions that we met, oftenest in Utica, for Christ- 
 mas and Easter were never more fitly honored in 
 the observance of my mind than at the home and 
 amid the books and treasures in Hopper street. 
 During the summer there were days and weeks 
 5 33 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 to be passed at the seashore or in the woods after 
 the manner of boys of our kind, each long holiday 
 adding appreciably to the fund of common remi- 
 niscences that were subsequently retailed in a 
 correspondence spasmodically renewed and again 
 allowed to lapse in the rush of the ensuing term. 
 One trip, which we made alone together in 1876, 
 stands out quite preeminent in my memory. We 
 ran down the St. Lawrence from the Thousand 
 Islands to the Gulf, stopping long enough in Mont- 
 real and Quebec to see the inside of a foreign 
 town, and so to Prince Edward Island and Nova 
 Scotia, where we passed some hot but exquisitely 
 enjoyable weeks. In such rambles amid new 
 scenes life to George always seemed to come at its 
 fullest. He was bent as keenly on seeing as though 
 this first long journey were to be his last ; nor was 
 there any school-boy carefulness of dignity that 
 prevented him from joining in the fun that was 
 going, however strange the society in which we 
 were thrown. I visited him once in Amherst in 
 the spring of his freshman year, and felt, as well 
 as saw, the high estimate which his classmates had 
 already put upon him. He was then seriously 
 considering architecture as a profession, for which 
 his skill in drawing as well as his tastes naturally 
 fitted him. After his choice of geology was defi- 
 nitely made he wisely began his technical studies 
 in a post-graduate course there under Professor 
 Emerson, and at the end of the college year he was 
 34 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 abundantly prepared to improve the opportunities 
 at that time only to be found in Germany. 
 
 On the 8th of July, 1879, we sailed for Liver- 
 pool, renewing on the steamer our intimate com- 
 panionship of former days, which the separation 
 in our different colleges had of late somewhat 
 abated. If I dwell at length upon the scenes of 
 these three ensuing years it must be ascribed not 
 alone to their joyous memories, which are all my 
 own, but to the newer and fuller recognition that 
 came to me in this period of a character that had 
 expanded from its bright youth into a calmer and 
 concentrated manhood. The year of special study 
 after graduation was perceptible in the steadying 
 influence brought to bear upon a susceptible mind 
 by holding ever before it the necessity of pursuing 
 a single high aim. To him now life meant but 
 one thing geology. Not that this new concen- 
 tration involved the entire self-abnegation which 
 is the ideal of many scientific specialists. On the 
 contrary, his love of life and the living continued 
 with an unabated unction that endeared him to 
 those who cared nothing for his profession, and 
 which explained the peculiar warmth of affection 
 bestowed upon him by men of all tastes and call- 
 ings. But by a resolution which I became aware 
 of rather intuitively, for we rarely discussed these 
 matters, the boy had quite deliberately put aside 
 other interests and become a man in choosing to 
 work at one definite undertaking. Henceforth all 
 35 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 other studies were regarded as means to this end ; 
 and so intent was he in these first days of high re- 
 solve on ordering his affairs to accord with a sternly 
 geological conscience, that I got plenty of oppor- 
 tunities for banter when he was tempted back into 
 paths of purely worldly enjoyment. 
 
 There are occasional references to this devotion 
 scattered through the long series of letters begin- 
 ning in July on the steamer Montana, and sent 
 with undeviating loyalty to the family at home dur- 
 ing the three years that follow. If we go to the 
 Biergarten or to the theater which we did with- 
 out reluctance it is because German is picked up 
 faster in such places, and German is the sine qua 
 non of the university course ; if we take an excur- 
 sion to the Hartz Mountains, or to a neighboring 
 town, it is because these jaunts reveal the physi- 
 cal structure of an important region ; if we spend 
 a vacation in Dresden or in Italy, it is because these 
 occasions for broadening the mind, when no lec- 
 tures are read, should not be neglected. I should 
 do him injustice indeed were I to emphasize too 
 strenuously a trait that was evident only to a very 
 few, and that might be ascribed in part to the pos- 
 session of a conscience inherited from Puritan an- 
 cestors ; but the awakening in him of this fastidious 
 sense of fitness seems to me to mark a great change 
 in the youth's character, a change without which 
 the lad of infinite possibilities would never have 
 become the man of infinite purpose. 
 
 36 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 We spent a few weeks in England before settling 
 in the North German town of Brunswick for a pre- 
 paratory course in German, which George here com- 
 menced ab initio. His progress in learning the 
 language was extraordinarily rapid, owing both to 
 his quick mastery of its grammatical structure and 
 to his good-natured insistence in making his Ger- 
 man acquaintances talk to him ; and it was no- 
 ticeable that in this respect the girls of the family 
 were singularly compliant. Our study of German 
 at this time was, oddly enough, the only occasion 
 when we were ever at work together on the same 
 subject, and it afforded me an opportunity to ap- 
 praise his intellectual methods which I should not 
 otherwise have enjoyed. He not only worked 
 rapidly and surely, but always insisted upon a de- 
 gree of absolute correctness that seemed to me to 
 border upon a counsel of perfection . Once engaged 
 in study, nothing would call him off until the task 
 was done, and often in hours of recreation he would 
 go over the lesson with an enthusiasm that showed 
 a keen relish for the mere brain exercise. He de- 
 vised a plan for committing to memory the irregular 
 verbs by writing the German on one side and its 
 English equivalent on the other of some pasteboard 
 bits which he carried loose in his pocket. Then, 
 when on his walks abroad, he amused himself and 
 his companion by pulling them out one at a time and 
 giving the principal parts if the German turned up, 
 or the German meaning if the English appeared, 
 37 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 until the pocketful was transferred to the other 
 side of his coat. Such a device, though unimpor- 
 tant by itself, has a certain interest as illustrating 
 the ready and often ingenious methods to which 
 he was apt to turn as a stimulus to his studies, 
 and the inventive habit thus acquired was after- 
 ward made of good service in his career as a 
 teacher. 
 
 There was some debate as to which university 
 should be chosen for the winter semester. Got- 
 tingen was finally selected as offering good facilities 
 in chemistry and mineralogy, and as being the 
 home of Professor von Seebach, a geologist of 
 eminence. We removed thither at the end of 
 October, and were promptly established in stu- 
 dent quarters in the quaint little town, after the 
 fashion described in George's letter home : 
 
 " We left Brunswick at 1 1 135 and arrived, with- 
 out mishap, in Gottingen at 2:30. Of course we 
 looked very green indeed, and both of us felt like 
 freshmen at an American college, and, indeed, our 
 position was exactly similar. Our excessive ver- 
 dancy immediately attracted to our side a profes- 
 sional ' Studentenfanger/ or student-catcher, as 
 they are called here, and knowing nothing else to 
 do, we calmly allowed ourselves to be captured 
 and managed by him. We were horribly hungry, 
 and so first got dinner, after which we started with 
 our would-be guide in quest of lodgings. I had 
 38 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 never heard of but one sort of student-life in Got- 
 tingen, and so the idea of being outside the walls, 
 or of living in a family, never entered my head, a 
 circumstance of which I am now very glad. We 
 rushed about with our ' vade-mecum/ looking at 
 all sorts of quarters, luckily with our minds pretty 
 well made up as to what we wanted, and at last 
 settled on a great big parlor and bed-room fitted up 
 in most thoroughly German style 17 Rothe 
 Strasse where we are at present lords of all we 
 survey, and living in the most independent way 
 of which you could conceive. You see, we have 
 no lack of room or furniture. The rooms front on 
 the street, in the very heart of the city. We have 
 four large windows that look directly south, and 
 as we are in the third story we get all the sun pos- 
 sible, though it hardly ever shines here at all, and 
 if it did, we are so far north that at high noon it 
 would hardly be as high as the roofs of the houses 
 opposite. However, it is now shining brightly, 
 and falls directly into our room. We both of us 
 have a large study table with a couple of book- 
 shelves over it, besides any amount of drawers and 
 nooks and corners ' to put things in.' Our stove 
 keeps us abundantly warm, and so far we have 
 been supplied only with wood, which is certainly 
 far superior to coal. Our sofa is luxurious, and 
 our beds excellent, so we are quite comfortable, 
 and the best of all is that we pay for all these ad- 
 vantages only $15 each from now till March 15, 
 
 39 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 exclusive of fire and light. ' Sehr billig ! ' as the 
 Germans say. The same man who at first piloted 
 us about exercises his exclusive rights as ' Stiefel- 
 Fuchs/ or boot-cleaner, every morning by coming 
 before we are up and blacking our boots and brush- 
 ing our clothes, while the Dienstmadchen, who is 
 always at the other end of our bell-rope, will do 
 anything we want, from building our fire as many 
 times in the day as necessary to bringing us beer 
 to drink in the evening. We feel quite as tho' 
 we were luxuriating in two servants, while it costs 
 us almost nothing. Every morning when we hop 
 out of bed we come out into a warm room where 
 a bright fire is blazing away, and a big pot of coffee 
 is on the stove. 
 
 "Thefirst morning after our arrival here we went 
 out for a walk, and after looking about the town 
 for a while decided to look up what Americans we 
 could find. We were directed outside of the walls, 
 and at length discovered a house where there were 
 four. We found that Americans at this university 
 always club together and form what is called the 
 ' American Colony ' for the purpose of assisting 
 new-comers, and for mutual pleasure and profit, 
 while they do not meet often enough to interfere 
 with individual work. This institution has had a 
 continual existence since 1855, anc ^ nas * ts regular 
 organization, books, American flags, etc. The 
 oldest resident member is styled the Patriarch, and 
 has charge of the archives and is chairman at all the 
 40 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 meetings. Perhaps the greatest service our coun- 
 trymen have rendered us has been to find us what 
 promises to be a capital boarding-place. We had 
 taken it rather as a matter of course that we should 
 have to board at a restaurant, and had been trying 
 several and began to despair of finding anything 
 respectable. Everywhere was the board poor, and 
 we were surrounded on all sides by the German 
 students, who eat exactly like animals and who 
 never say a word while they are at work. We 
 gladly accepted an invitation from two Americans 
 to take tea with them in the family of a lady whose 
 husband was formerly a professor and is now dead. 
 The family understand no English, so German 
 must always be spoken, which for our friends is 
 easy enough, and for us will be a great advantage 
 for we have decided to try the house for a month 
 at least, and think that we shall like it immensely. 
 " My work at the university will begin in earnest 
 to-morrow. I have not been matriculated, but that 
 will come very soon. For this semester, of course, 
 the work I do is not so important as my German, 
 and yet I shall not be idle. I shall at least have 
 two lectures every day, one in Inorganic Chemistry 
 by Professor Hubner, and one on Mineralogy by 
 Professor Klein. Perhaps I shall also have half a 
 day's work in the laboratory besides. Most unfor- 
 tunately Professor Seebach, with whom Professor 
 Emerson studied here, is too sick to do any active 
 work. He is a comparatively young man, but is 
 6 41 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 said to be dying of consumption. He is quite re- 
 nowned, and is already an authority on American 
 geology, having been in the United States a num- 
 ber of years. I sent my letter of introduction to 
 him to-day through the mail, and hope that I shall 
 soon hear that he can see me." 
 
 So liberal a quotation as this would entirely fail 
 of the object sought in its reproduction here if it 
 did not convey more accurately than any words 
 of my own could his abiding determination to see 
 and make the best of his environment. To his 
 optimism every change was a promise of better 
 things, and the will to seize upon the favorable 
 factors in a given situation was frequently all that 
 was necessary to secure for himself whatever was 
 suited to his needs. He possessed, nevertheless, 
 sufficient discernment to prevent his falling readily 
 into choosing merely what was nearest and most 
 convenient. However complaisant and courteous 
 to those with whom he came into professional 
 contact, it was evident that his demands upon them 
 would be rigorous if his own high ideals were to 
 be fulfilled. The educational opportunities which 
 Gottingen afforded him were soon found to be 
 meager enough in the absence of Seebach from his 
 chair, yet, being once fairly settled to work, he 
 wisely concluded to get all the benefits possible 
 from the courses in chemistry and mineralogy, 
 and by completing the semester there to make this 
 42 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 time count toward the three years necessary to 
 securing a university degree. In January, indeed, 
 any remaining doubts were dissipated by the rather 
 sudden death of Professor von Seebach, whose 
 funeral is described in the following letter as a 
 characteristic episode of German university life : 
 
 "Between Wednesday last and yesterday (Sat- 
 urday), there has not been much doing in the uni- 
 versity. Nothing can be more German than the 
 way every one here seizes the least opportunity to 
 take a little rest. Seebach had done no active 
 work for a year and a half, but his death has af- 
 forded a chance for a general stoppage which cul- 
 minated yesterday in a complete cessation of all 
 lectures. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were 
 nominal workdays, to be sure, but no one felt in- 
 clined to work much out of honor for the pro- 
 fessor. I made the most of the time in catching 
 up in some work with which I had fallen some- 
 what behind, and in reading a good deal of Ger- 
 man. On account of the funeral yesterday the day 
 was regarded as rather a festal occasion, and really 
 the procession reminded me much more of one of 
 our 4th-of-July processions than anything funereal 
 which I had ever before seen. There were some 
 unimportant exercises at the house at ten o'clock, 
 after which the train moved through the town to 
 the Albani churchyard, where he was buried. As 
 the procession was to pass our room I did not go 
 43 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 to the house, but attended it from here to the ceme- 
 tery. Long before we could see or hear anything 
 from our windows the streets were full of expect- 
 ant people. After a time we heard music, and at 
 length the procession itself appeared. First came 
 the two reverend University pedells (or poodles, as 
 they are called here), dressed in the deepest mourn- 
 ing and followed by a full brass band the members 
 of which wore long black robes, black stovepipe 
 hats, and discoursed the most doleful music. Next 
 came the hearse a broad open cart, drawn by 
 four horses covered to their hoofs with black robes. 
 Upon this was placed the coffin, an enormous 
 yellow sarcophagus, covered with green branches 
 and white ribbons. Behind this came the greater 
 part of the faculty, the professors and other offi- 
 cials walking two by two. This certainly closed 
 the funeral part of the affair, for next came the 
 corps, each represented by its most honored mem- 
 bers the old and hardest fighters, who evidently 
 considered that they were conferring the greatest 
 possible honor upon the professor by thus follow- 
 ing him to his grave, Twelve or thirteen corps 
 and societies were represented, each of which was 
 preceded by its most famous members, carrying 
 its flags and dressed in costumes such as it is rarely 
 one's lot to see outside of a masquerade ball or a 
 costumer's shop. Some had on dress suits, but 
 more were arrayed in the most fantastic clothes, 
 composed of every color of the rainbow and giving 
 44 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 them rather the appearance of harlequins than of 
 mourners at a funeral. This gay and festive as- 
 sortment of the pets of the university was followed 
 by the ordinary students who were inclined thus 
 to show their respect for the departed, and the 
 whole train was closed by a company of soldiers. 
 There were no carriages, the only one that was 
 used being driven up in great haste, after the rest 
 had reached the grave, containing the two minis- 
 ters who were to officiate there. The ceremony 
 was short, but as the snow was wet and cold, I 
 did not remain but came directly home. Although 
 the regular Saturday duels were omitted, there was 
 a ' Kneipe ' indulged in that evening which fully 
 equaled any Irish wake of which I ever heard." 
 
 On our return from Dresden, where the Christ- 
 mas holidays were spent, George remained a few 
 days in Leipzig for the purpose of examining the 
 opportunities offered there in his line. I quote 
 a passage from his letter describing this visit for 
 its interest as being the first announcement of his 
 desire to enter upon a specialty with which his 
 career is closely associated. 
 
 " A Mr. Cross, who graduated from Amherst in 
 1875, is now studying mineralogy with Professor 
 Zirkel in Leipsic, and has been very kind, devoting 
 an entire day to explaining his work to me, and in 
 taking me to call on the professors, etc. His course 
 
 45 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 throughout has been almost exactly similar to mine, 
 having spent a post-graduate year in Amherst and 
 then gone directly to Gottingen, where he re- 
 mained till spring, when he removed to Leipzig. 
 As it is of course impossible, when one is study- 
 ing geology, to go deeply into all departments, it 
 becomes necessary very soon to choose a line of 
 study in which to make one's final examination. 
 Cross almost immediately decided upon Professor 
 Zirkel's specialty, microscopical lithology or Pe- 
 tragraphy. This is almost a new science, having 
 been developed by Professors Zirkel and Rosen- 
 busch (of Heidelberg), who are now acknowledged 
 as its leaders. It consists of the examination of 
 the internal structure of rocks, cut into thin sec- 
 tions, by the microscope, and, as almost nothing 
 in this line has yet been done in America, it ap- 
 peared to Cross to offer the best chance for original 
 work. This is evident from the fact that all the 
 work of this kind done by late United States Gov- 
 ernment Surveys was performed in Leipzig by 
 Zirkel. Certainly it will be useless for me to think 
 of studying longer than this semester in Gottingen, 
 as Seebach, the only geologist, is beyond work. 
 That Leipzig is by far the best place for me to go to 
 I am thoroughly convinced, as well from my own 
 visit to the place as from all I hear from other 
 sources. Besides Zirkel as petragraphist and min- 
 eralogist, Credner, one of the best-known geolo- 
 gists in Germany, is there. He has, in addition to 
 46 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 his regular university work, the sole direction of 
 the survey of Saxony, which is now being very 
 carefully made, so that he has the best possible op- 
 portunity to give his students practical out-door 
 work in the way of excursions, both alone and 
 with him, the railroad expenses of which are paid 
 by government." 
 
 This letter must not be considered so character- 
 istic of his enthusiastic optimism as it at first 
 appears. He was won to write these hopeful 
 phrases by the inspiration of a perfectly new dis- 
 covery, and how new this branch of science was 
 to him^is best witnessed by his persistently em- 
 ploying the erroneous form petragraphy in letters 
 of this period. But his final decision was not 
 reached without some misgivings, nor without a 
 'sturdy determination to discuss his course fully 
 in relation to every facility which the whole uni- 
 versity system of Germany might offer him. It 
 was his way to catch at ideas eagerly, even bran- 
 dishing them a little when caught, yet few men 
 of his age could be found anywhere who were less 
 apt to be guided by impulse. His was a time of 
 life then to yield to enthusiasms that were super- 
 lative, excessive in their first flush, but which, 
 whether in estimating persons or professional prob- 
 lems, never seemed to permanently affect his sober 
 judgment. 
 
 I left him in Gottingen at the end of February 
 47 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 still debating his future, but disposed to adopt pe- 
 trography as the "Hauptfach" of his university 
 career. During my absence of a fortnight in Eng- 
 land and Belgium he concluded his lectures and re- 
 paired to Heidelberg audire alteram partem to 
 personally investigate the advantages offered by the 
 only university that could boast a rival to Zirkel. 
 This he was prevented from doing by a sudden 
 and rather dangerous inflammation of the orbital 
 periosteum that developed on the day after his ar- 
 rival in Heidelberg, whither he summoned me by 
 telegram to seek for him in the hospital. 
 
 His illness, coming as it did at the outset of a 
 vacation trip to Italy, which we had planned with 
 much eagerness, made us both very grave. The 
 disease, which might be roughly explained to the 
 lay reader as a sty growing inward, not infre- 
 quently involves the loss of an eye, and this to the 
 poor boy meant a total extinguishment of all his 
 cherished hopes, while I, hardly less concerned, 
 had to summon up, as best I could, the unhappy 
 courage of the looker-on. Fortunately we were 
 not kept long in suspense ; the swelling was lanced 
 by one of the most skilful oculists in Germany, and . 
 at the end of a fortnight we were upon our way 
 south. But the detention had prevented him from 
 seeing for himself what the university had to offer 
 him. Yet he found out enough from some fellow 
 Americans here, chance acquaintances, but soon 
 friends, to convince him in the brief interval of 
 48 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 his convalescence that Heidelberg, after all, was 
 what he wanted. He left the place with a deter- 
 mination, never afterwards regretted, to return 
 there for his next semester. 
 
 In Italy we were once more school-boys on a 
 holiday lark as in years gone by. I confess I 
 watched my cousin with some interest for signs, 
 amid the stimulating scenes through which we 
 passed, of a revived penchant for architecture, the 
 choice of which he had laid aside for science ; but 
 there was no intimation at all of this. His recol- 
 lection of what he had read on art quickened the 
 delight he took in sight-seeing, as it would another; 
 that was all. From these somewhat esthetic plea- 
 sures, fascinating as they might be to one side of 
 his nature, he turned with even increased satisfac- 
 tion to his geological studies. The full letters, 
 which it is hard to refrain from quoting here, occa- 
 sionally give expression to a feeling, increasing 
 with his sense of manhood, that such vacation en- 
 joyments are only fit as interludes in one's serious 
 work, and there occurs in all of them no declara- 
 tion of delight more sincere than that of returning 
 to a university curriculum. He is settled early in 
 May under the shadow of the great castle, in a 
 pension which contrasts blandly with the primi- 
 tive lodgings described in his first letter from 
 Gottingen. 
 
 "Our landlady, Frau Rath Nebel," he writes, 
 " is a charming old lady, and has quite a family of 
 7 49 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 her own. One of her daughters is married and 
 living in Constantinople, where, of course, all the 
 others have been to visit her, and have brought 
 back from thence Turkish things that rival, if they 
 do not surpass, Mother's choicest assortment. It 
 seems not a little natural for me to go into a parlor 
 where the hard-wood floor is covered with Persian 
 rugs, and the divans, tables, and a good part of the 
 walls with Turkish embroidery, while the windows 
 and door-ways are hung with beautiful oriental 
 curtains and lambrequins. As you may imagine, 
 two or three Turkish tables and a lot of old china 
 make the illusion quite perfect, and were it not that 
 I miss the old familiar faces, I might even think 
 myself at home." 
 
 The mention of Oriental stuffs suggests the only 
 other extensive journey which I made with him in 
 Europe. Whether moved by the encouragement 
 of his worthy landlady, or by the invitation of our 
 aunt, who was then living in Constantinople, I 
 know not, but by the end of the semester he ap- 
 pears to have been seized with a sort of yearning 
 for the East. He wrote an appealing letter to me 
 in Berlin to join him, and, nothing loath, I met him 
 by arrangement in Triest to begin another two- 
 months' trip in his company. Our route to Athens 
 included a stop over a day in the island of Syra, 
 where he was soon in search of some hornblende 
 rock about which I had heard much already on the 
 50 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 voyage. ' ' Walked about the town/' he writes in 
 his diary, "and even ascended the hills which rise 
 behind it, seeking the Glaukophan, which occurs 
 in such abundance and perfection, but found it so 
 insufferably hot that I was obliged to give up my 
 quest. I found the principal mass below was a 
 talcose-micaceous schist, with glaucophane crys- 
 tals overtopped with masses of bluish limestone, 
 which were extensively quarried for building pur- 
 poses, and even exceeded in thickness the schist 
 below. However, the general formation of the 
 island is rather complicated, and I could see and 
 judge but little of it. F. wandered in another di- 
 rection in his search for pretty Greek girls and was 
 more successful than I." It is only a glimpse of 
 him at the threshold of his life's work. I cannot 
 convey to another the clear impression it brings 
 back to me of his whimsical disgust at the vulgar 
 obstacles of ill-smelling hovels and an August sun 
 which had thwarted him nor of the half wistful 
 look that greeted my account of pleasanterand less 
 ambitious adventures. 
 
 For the humanity that was strong within him 
 redeemed him from the least taint of priggishness 
 toward those of secular tastes, keeping him, both 
 at this formative period and later, in touch with the 
 world of every-day people. He stood well, too, in 
 the self-sacrificing and kindly life of those good 
 women at whose house in Scutari we spent a 
 month of rest and recreation. They left nothing 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 undone that could add to our enjoyment, already 
 overflowing with the mere delight of a return, after 
 so many months among strangers, to the frank in- 
 timacies of dear relatives and home-life. This is 
 not the place to indicate the wealth of incident with 
 which this visit teemed, nor to try and paint its 
 pageantry of light and color. Its effect upon 
 George was obviously stimulating, but more no- 
 ticeable than this to me was the happiness that 
 seemed to radiate from him upon all the friends 
 with whom he came in contact, making our excur- 
 sions and festivities fall below the standard of per- 
 fection without his genial presence. 
 
 By piecing together a few fragments from his 
 letters we shall make him his own witness to his 
 work during the next semester. From this time 
 he appears in the full current of professional study, 
 with eye single to his course and impatient of any 
 interruption that at all delayed the prospect of a 
 degree. 
 
 (November, 1 880.) ' ' For our mutual improve- 
 ment three of us who are together in the Lab. 
 have recently organized a mineralogical colloqui- 
 um, which meets twice a week. We come toge- 
 ther alternately in our different rooms, and for two 
 hours at a time put each other through as rigid an 
 examination on some carefully prepared subject as 
 is possible, and as we are all bent on work the 
 thing promises to be productive of the best results 
 to me especially, as I get German at the same 
 52 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 time with mineralogy. By confining ourselves to 
 a definite and comparatively limited subject each 
 evening, we shall be able to cover the whole 
 ground in the course of the semester in a most 
 profitable and thorough way. In preparing for ex- 
 amination this is the best practice one can have. 
 Of my two colleagues one is a Berliner who has 
 already spent a considerable time in pursuing geo- 
 logical studies, and the other is a Japanese who 
 has spent a good portion of his life in Germany 
 in the same line, and as neither can speak a word 
 of English I find it to my interest, both for the 
 sake of science and language, to cultivate them 
 assiduously. . . . 
 
 " The more we who work with him know of 
 Rosenbusch the better we like him. Dr. Oebecke, 
 who has already been employed in various Ger- 
 man universities for some eight years past, says 
 that he has never before met so generous, kind- 
 hearted, and devoted a professor, and this is cer- 
 tainly my experience also. He is always in the 
 laboratory, and, no matter what he is doing, is 
 ready to put himself at our disposal any minute. 
 He is most generous in furnishing us with mate- 
 rial, that would otherwise be unattainable, for 
 working into our own collections quite contrary 
 to the custom of professors generally, who are 
 much more ready to take than to give. He seems 
 to take a special interest in me, and I have enjoyed 
 many a good talk with him on politics, art, etc., 
 
 53 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 as well as on mineralogy, and upon all of these he 
 is remarkably informed. He is also a great trav- 
 eller and linguist, speaking French, Spanish, Italian, 
 Portuguese, and English, as well as German, hav- 
 ing, indeed, studied philology, and made his degree 
 in that subject in Gottingen. 
 
 (February, 1881 .) "It had been my intention to 
 take palaeontology in order to obtain as broad a view 
 of the entire field as possible. This is, however, 
 contrary to the advice both of Rosenbusch and Em- 
 erson. As they both rightly say, the day is past 
 when any one man can possess any very special 
 knowledge of both the sides inorganic and organic 
 of geology, and as the former seems to be much 
 more to my taste, it is better that I devote myself, 
 now at least, altogether to that. Any thorough 
 knowledge of palaeontology must be prefaced by a 
 long study of zoology, while all the mineralogy and 
 petrography I could get must be more or less super- 
 ficial without an accurate acquaintance with chem- 
 istry, in which I 'm sadly lacking. Here in Hei- 
 delberg is the best inorganic laboratory in Europe, 
 with Bunsen at its head, than whom no one has 
 accomplished more or become better known in his 
 chosen branch. In a long talk I had with Rosen- 
 busch the other day, his advice was to give up my 
 idea of working in palaeontology and take Bunsen's 
 course until I could make to my own satisfaction 
 silicate analyses, when and when only I shall 
 be able to fully appreciate and use the petrographi- 
 54 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 cal and mineralogical knowledge I get from him. 
 This is certainly to the point, and in accepting it I 
 shall begin my work in the chemical laboratory 
 next semester." 
 
 In the spring following he stayed six weeks with 
 me in Paris, from whence we ran in April down to 
 the Auvergne region. He did his duty but imper- 
 fectly towards the sights of the city, but here is the 
 story of one of his occupations : 
 
 (Paris, March 20, 1 88 1 .) "I would not have you 
 think that I have been quite idle here, though I 've 
 seen few of the sights that ordinarily interest a 
 stranger. Professors Fouque and Levy are at work 
 here in the College de France, and I called on them 
 last Monday rather in fear and trembling, as I 
 knew I could n't speak a word of French. How- 
 ever, Fred went with me, and after an introduction, 
 and discovering that they both spoke German all 
 went smoothly enough. They are the authors of 
 that splendid work on petrography, of which I 
 wrote you, and received me most cordially when 
 they learned I was a scholar of Rosenbusch. They 
 seemed only too glad to show and explain anything 
 to me. Their specialty is the investigation of rocks 
 synthetically, i.e., their artificial reproduction 
 from their chemical elements, in this way dis- 
 covering the various conditions of heat, pressure, 
 etc., under which they must have been formed in 
 volcanoes. In this line they are as yet almost the 
 55 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 only investigators, and their results have quite sur- 
 passed their own expectations. Owing to their 
 kindness I have already passed four mornings with 
 them, and thoroughly seen the way in which they 
 obtain their artificial productions, and also micro- 
 scopically examined them in sections, and compared 
 them with natural ones, from which they are hardly 
 to be distinguished. Perhaps best of all is the 
 assistance I 've received from Professor Fouque for 
 carrying out my cherished project for a visit to the 
 Auvergne in central France. He has shown and 
 told me of everything that exists in the way of 
 books and maps on that district, and has laid out 
 a detailed plan for a two- weeks! trip there." 
 
 The Black Forest having been selected as a pro- 
 mising locality for work leading to a thesis he spent 
 a portion of his next vacation there. The scientific 
 value of this investigation is elsewhere estimated ; 
 I cull this from a letter as an indication that his 
 humor and eye for the picturesque are still alive : 
 
 (Tryberg, September 25, 1881.) " My life here 
 has already become almost as prosaic and unevent- 
 ful as that of the people among whom I have taken 
 up my abode. I go wandering about from morn- 
 ing to night in long leggings, with a knapsack on 
 my back and a big hammer in my hand, exciting 
 the curiosity of all the old farmers and buxom coun- 
 try girls, as much as they, by their strange costumes 
 and odd customs, do mine. Now here, as every- 
 56 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 where in Europe, there is no employment quite so 
 low as pounding stones on the public road, and to 
 see a wild-looking individual, dressed in the above 
 fashion, doing this, and doing it too in the most 
 random way, excites them beyond measure ; and 
 often after their friendly ' guten Tag,' they come up 
 to me with the funniest questions. If I tell them 
 that I am from America their interest is vastly in- 
 creased, as almost all have friends or relatives there, 
 and of course at once inquire after them. They 
 generally insist that I must have emigrated when 
 young from Germany to look as human as I do, 
 and one old watchmaker the other day in Schon- 
 wald, after I had convinced him that I had been 
 scarcely two years in this country, observed that 
 he was glad to have seen a real American before he 
 died. Not that Americans are any scarcity in the 
 Black Forest, but they seldom depart from certain 
 beaten tracks of travel." 
 
 It is pleasant to observe in these three years of 
 letters a gradual improvement in literary expres- 
 sion. The advance was eminently unconscious 
 and incidental, for style pure and simple was some- 
 thing he cared little about. He wrote, as he spoke, 
 naturally rather than brilliantly or even very well, 
 and now that the sound of the voice is gone no 
 felicities of speech remain to show how inspiriting 
 he could make his talk. His letters home became 
 shorter and somewhat less exhaustive in detail, but 
 57 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 when in the mood he would hit off some incidents 
 with a -verve that renders them excellent reading, 
 
 (Heidelberg, July 16, 1882.) "Last evening 
 there was a great students' ' Commers/ or drinking 
 and singing affair, in the old hall at the castle, at 
 which six hundred students were present. The 
 Anglo-American club had a table to itself, and 
 Olds, as our representative, was expected to pre- 
 side in regalia uniform. He must have a great 
 plumed hat, a dress-coat and vest, tight-fitting 
 white pants, and high cavalry boots, with sword, 
 gauntlet-gloves, sash, etc. All went well enough 
 except the pantaloons, but they were impossible to 
 find, so he ended by appearing in a pair of drawers 
 fixed up to fit the occasion ! I told him I should 
 write you of the distinction as well as the costume 
 he had achieved. 
 
 " Poor Blank is in Europe these days as crazy as 
 ever, if not more so. He wrote me a postal from 
 London saying that he and the President would 
 spend to-day in Cologne, coming thence the next 
 day up the Rhine to Heidelberg. He begged me 
 to meet them at the station, without, however, 
 giving any time for their arrival. Yesterday came 
 a telegram from Antwerp begging for my address. 
 I expect to see him before long, but if he stays here, 
 as he proposes, I shall procure a nurse to take care 
 of him. . . . 
 
 " The student world was not a little excited yes- 
 58 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 terday by the news of a pistol duel between two 
 fellows at Neckarsteinach where I took the girls 
 for an excursion when they were here. They shot 
 at each other three times, each time coming nearer, 
 until at length, when only five paces apart, one 
 man received a bullet in the abdomen, which very 
 nearly caused his death. The other fled to France. 
 A pistol duel here is of rare occurrence, but even 
 in this case the cause for quarrel seems ridiculous. 
 One fellow passed the other on the street in a gray 
 suit and remarked, ' Gray is the color of a fool/ 
 The other then boxed his ears, and they must settle 
 it with pistols." 
 
 (October i, 1882.) "I rejoice to say that my 
 ' Arbeit ' is progressing excellently, and for the 
 past two weeks I have worked upon nothing else. 
 I have now already copied eighty-six pages of it, 
 and shall probably have forty or fifty more. This 
 is mostly written, but I can go no further with the 
 copying until I have finished some laboratory work 
 which will occupy me all of the coming week. What 
 will really make the most interesting point in the 
 whole affair is the separation and investigation of 
 some very curious little needles which the mica of 
 one of my rocks contains. Similar needles have re- 
 ceived considerable attention from various inves- 
 tigators, but no one has as yet reached any conclu- 
 sion in regard to their nature on account of the 
 great difficulty of isolating them. I worked with 
 Rosenbusch about five weeks in the spring with- 
 59 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 out any results, but yesterday we hit upon a 
 method which promises to be successful, and I shall 
 therefore for the present be busy in trying to carry 
 it out, and if it succeeds it will be well worth while. 
 Rosenbusch was talking yesterday about the time 
 of my examination and said he hoped I could make 
 it by the end of November, as he should be sorry 
 on my mother's account if I were not home by 
 Christmas." 
 
 (November 5.) "I have been busy of late in get- 
 ting together all my necessary papers for the faculty 
 and shall hand them in to the Decan on Tuesday, 
 immediately after which I shall receive a formal 
 visit from the University beadle, who announces 
 the ' Termin/ or date on which my fate is to be 
 decided. It will be in about three weeks from now 
 probably from to-morrow night. The amount 
 of red tape required is quite appalling. First, I 
 must have a huge document begging in the most 
 humble terms that the most high and mighty faculty 
 of the ' Universitat ' Heidelberg will allow a poor 
 worm of the dust to be quizzed by divers professors 
 on divers subjects for the space of two hours. 
 Then I must have a history of my life, beginning 
 with my mother's maiden name and the day I was 
 born, extending to the present date. Aside from 
 these, there are all the diplomas, certificates, etc., 
 which can possibly be raked together for my credit, 
 a passport, and a paper from the police testifying 
 that as far as they know I have a good character 
 60 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 and have never been in the town jail ! All this 
 truck I have at length assembled and shall hand it 
 in for approval in a day or two. My work in re- 
 viewing goes on slowly but hardly satisfactorily, 
 as it seems as tho' I did little else than discover 
 how much there is I don't know. However, that 
 would probably be the case if I kept this up for 
 a year, so I think it 's best to get through with it 
 as soon as possible." 
 
 To those who knew him well the success which 
 he achieved in his examination was no great sur- 
 prise, but 1 am convinced that there was no pretense 
 whatever about his own astonishment. It was by 
 far the most important prize heretofore earned, 
 there being in the competition for a German Uni- 
 versity degree a certain international dignity that 
 gives it especial value. George had indeed a 
 pretty accurate sense of his own ability and powers 
 of application in accomplishing a given task, but 
 he gave others also credit for possessing the same 
 qualities in a higher degree, so that in measuring 
 himself with them his modesty forbade him to in- 
 dulge in extravagant hopes . The result as described 
 in the letter which follows was to him the seal of 
 a long endeavor, the vindication of a choice made 
 not without misgivings due to its importance: 
 
 (Frankfort-a-M., Thanksgiving eve.) "This has 
 been indeed a day of most heartfelt thanksgiving 
 61 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 for me. Since my exam, on Tuesday, of which I 
 at once telegraphed you the result, I have been in 
 such a constant whirl of all sorts of excitements 
 that I have only this day ended my good-bys to 
 friends and taken a final farewell of Heidelberg. 1 
 rejoice more than I can tell that I have been able to 
 accomplish my examination in a manner which 
 exceeded my fondest hopes. After last Friday I 
 hardly opened a book again, but spent all my time 
 in walking and doing everything possible to refresh 
 my head and mind. Monday I made my calls upon 
 the professors in the regulation full-dress uniform, 
 inviting them to be present at the examination the 
 next evening. Tuesday I passed in walking and 
 chatting with my friends at the club until after five 
 in the afternoon, when I had to go home to dress. 
 At six I walked over to the University feeling as 
 well as I ever did in my life and as unconcerned as 
 though I had been going for my usual constitu- 
 tional. 
 
 " About five minutes past six I was ushered by 
 the beadle into the room where so many fates 
 have been decided, and into the presence of the 
 august profs, who were gravely seated about a 
 long, green table. There were fourteen or fifteen 
 in all, so that it seemed rather an array for one 
 poor fellow to face, but I made my bow and took 
 my seat next to Rosenbusch, who at once com- 
 menced to question me as mercilessly as possible 
 and kept it up until 7.15. Then I was through 
 62 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 with my mineralogy and geology and felt already 
 as though the battle were about won. After 
 a short pause, during which I was treated at the 
 university's expense to some very bad wine, old 
 Bunsen attacked me in chemistry, and he was 
 followed by Rosenbusch, who finished the exam, 
 with a half-hour's quiz in petrography. It was 
 very nearly half-past eight when he finally said, 
 ' Thank you, Herr Candidat/ and then I knew 
 that the ordeal was over. I went out into the ad- 
 joining room, and after a few moments was ush- 
 ered back again to hear the verdict. The professors 
 were all standing in a row facing the door as I en- 
 tered, and the Decan walked up to me and said the 
 faculty would confer my degree upon me the next 
 morning at twelve o'clock. I think I have already 
 explained to you that there are four grades given, 
 although the title is in each case the same. They 
 are distinguished by the Latin in which they are 
 expressed in the diploma as, first, ' Summa cum 
 laude ' ; second, ' Insignis cum laude ' ; third, 
 'Multa cum laude'; and fourth, 'Without pre- 
 dicat/ The number which is given is not an- 
 nounced the same evening, and as a rule the poor 
 fellow must wait till the next day before he knows 
 just how he came out. However, I prevailed upon 
 the old beadle to find out if possible and tell me 
 the same evening. 
 
 " Then I went downstairs and was received by 
 a crowd of fifteen fellows who had assembled to 
 63 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 hear of my success. I went home to change my 
 clothes and so to the beadle's house to hear what 
 he had learned, and you may imagine my surprise 
 and joy when he said (what at first I would not 
 believe) that they had really given me the first 
 degree a Summa cum laude. I could scarcely 
 credit my ears, but the next morning, when I was 
 formally invested with my title and diploma at the 
 University, it proved to be quite true. Of course 
 I was generally and most heartily congratulated 
 by no one more heartily than by Rosenbusch him- 
 self and by his wife and I have done little since 
 except shake hands with nearly everybody I met in 
 the street, for the result seemed to be very generally 
 known. Rosenbusch has not given this degree for 
 the past three years, and then he conferred it on 
 an American, Dr. Hawes. I will give you more 
 particulars later when 1 am home ; this is only to 
 tell you that I have been as successful as was in 
 any event possible, and far more successful than I 
 had hoped to be. I know there is no one who 
 will be more interested or who will congratulate 
 me more sincerely than you, and there is certainly 
 no one whose congratulations I value so highly as 
 yours, who have so generously made my success 
 possible.". . . 
 
 What remains of the externals of George's life 
 is fitly described by others ; I must hasten to a 
 finale already too long deferred. His return to 
 64 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 America brought him at once the employment in 
 his cherished profession so eagerly sought, and 
 allowed him less and less leisure for letters. Dur- 
 ing the dozen years of life that remained to him he 
 became more staid as responsibilities increased, 
 but he was never morbid or fretful or afflicted with 
 those faults of temper which spring from nervous- 
 ness and dread. Perhaps the chief development 
 to be noted was in his critical faculty, which grew 
 stronger and truer, less apt to miscarry through 
 enthusiasm, than formerly. For the same reason 
 he became a wise adviser to his students, as I once 
 had occasion to observe, being present at an inter- 
 view with one of them when he discussed his plans 
 with a frankness of interest that seemed to bring 
 the young man very near to him, arousing at once 
 that sentiment of respect and devotion which is 
 the sure proof of qualification for the teacher's 
 calling. 
 
 On the whole, a character of such transparent 
 clearness and direct methods is not likely to be in- 
 trospective, nor ought we to linger unduly in an 
 analysis of one who was ever ingenuous and sin- 
 cere. Heart-searchings seldom interrupted the 
 equanimity of his career, yet, though free from 
 false modesty, he was his own severest critic. 
 Weaknesses and sins must indeed be recognized 
 and confessed to secure forgiveness, but the best 
 and happiest among us are those who, like George, 
 rise serenely above unworthy regrets to happier 
 9 65 
 
EARLY LIFE AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 hopes for the future. Let us leave him here with 
 a tender expression of this sentiment written to 
 his mother on his thirty-fourth birthday : " I realize, 
 as you say, all the many things that I have to be 
 daily thankful for. If I stop to look broadly at my 
 life and surroundings I can see only happiness and 
 joy, and I am ashamed that I sometimes let mo- 
 mentary annoyances come near enough to obscure 
 the clearness of the wider view that I let the 
 little things fret me. As you say, too, it is the 
 motive of life and not its achievement that makes 
 up happiness. I know that this must be so, but 
 you and father have now come where you can 
 realize it from your own experience ; while with 
 me there is often a longing for praise from others 
 rather than from my own consciousness." 
 
 66 
 
AT THE UTICA ACADEMY 
 
 GEORGE C. SAWYER 
 
 F the many pupils who pass through the 
 public schools some few there are who 
 leave behind them in the minds of their in- 
 structors memories of singular persistence. Among 
 those whose record at the Utica Academy stands 
 highest, and who have left an enduring name since 
 my connection with this school for more than a 
 whole generation, I place George Huntington Will- 
 iams, student at the Utica Academy, 1870 to 1874, 
 and Instructor in Science, 1878 to 1879. Entering 
 the Academy in 1870 from the public grammar 
 school, our Advanced School, with high testimo- 
 nials, young Williams at once took and maintained 
 a first-rate stand. The especial notes of his school 
 career were constant assiduity and intelligent pur- 
 pose, combined with an individuality remarkable 
 in a schoolboy. As well as single pupils, so also 
 there are classes that abide in the Principal's recol- 
 lection long after their school career is closed. 
 
 Notable was this in the instance of the class of 
 '74 of our Academy. I recall distinctly after the 
 lapse of twenty years the names and faces of cer- 
 tain bright, intelligent, scholarly boys and girls 
 who composed that class. Each recitation hour 
 67 
 
AT THE UTICA ACADEMY 
 
 in the classics in -my room was the occasion of ac- 
 tive struggle with the niceties and intricacies of 
 the Latin and Greek languages, wherein each stu- 
 dent vied with the other as to who should bring 
 forward from the rich storehouse of antiquity, at 
 the fitting moment, whatever might pertain to 
 the elucidation of the lesson of the day, whether 
 of philology, mythology, rhetoric, history, or geog- 
 raphy. In this last-mentioned department I re- 
 member, as though of yesterday, the map of 
 Athens which George brought into the class. This 
 was, in its line, perhaps the best piece of work 
 ever produced in the school, and prefigured in its 
 accuracy, faithfulness of detail and finish, the char- 
 acteristics of his work in the specific subjects of his 
 professional after-life. I recollect, too, the genuine 
 and evident satisfaction with which he told me on 
 his return from his student residence abroad that 
 this geographical study had stood him in good 
 stead, since, on his visit to Athens, he knew just 
 where to locate each topographical feature of that 
 ancient city, the object of his enthusiasm and rever- 
 ence. Although he did equally well in the Mathe- 
 matics and Sciences, I dwell especially upon the 
 foregoing studies, as he was brought by them 
 more under my own personal observation. In- 
 deed, one could scarcely have predicted while at 
 the Academy, until perhaps in the half year of 
 his teaching there, in what direction his life-work 
 might ultimately lie. 
 
 68 
 
AT THE UTICA ACADEMY 
 
 While full always of the real business of his 
 school duties, and ever moving, even at this early 
 age, on a high plane of thoughtful and serious en- 
 deavor, he was at the same time of a pleasant and 
 even playful disposition. Never giving his teachers 
 the slightest cause to complain of his conduct or 
 manners, he was so interested in his studies and in 
 everything pertaining to his school that it seemed 
 as though it were the most natural thing in the 
 world for him to make it the joyful centre of his 
 thoughts and energies. 
 
 His oration at graduation, with the Valedictory 
 of his class, on the "Law of Progress/' was a seri- 
 ous, intellectual effort, expressing a deep sense of 
 the future that was opening before him and his 
 classmates with its hopes and its responsibilities. 
 
 Keeping close to the account of that portion of 
 his life spent at the Utica Academy, George's next 
 connection with it was during the year after his 
 graduation from Amherst. The gap of nearly 
 three-quarters of this year, which intervened be- 
 tween the end of his College course and his stu- 
 dent life abroad, was filled by him as instructor in 
 the Science department of the Utica Academy. To 
 these duties he brought a freshness and vigor 
 which at once stimulated his classes and carried 
 them onward successfully, while his personal in- 
 fluence, quiet and unforced, commanded their re- 
 spect and affection. Thus, in this new and trying 
 field of labor, he showed the same marked quali- 
 69 
 
AT THE UTICA ACADEMY 
 
 ties as a teacher which afterward distinguished 
 him in his connection with more advanced stu- 
 dents as Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. 
 
 He kept his classes close up to the mark of an 
 unusually high standard, and left, somewhat un- 
 pectedly, before the close of the school year, in 
 pursuance of his plan of foreign study, much to 
 the regret and followed by the best wishes of 
 students and fellow-teachers. 
 
 Personally, at this time, I predicted the promi- 
 nence George was sure to reach in the higher walks 
 of science to which he was now determined to de- 
 vote his energies. To one so deeply interested 
 as myself it became a source of great satisfaction 
 to watch him as a young man in his growing ma- 
 turity, pursuing that steady course of progress by 
 means of which he was making a name already on 
 a level with the ablest in his own department of 
 research. It was a gratification at the time, as 
 it will always be a source of peculiar satisfaction, 
 that I was able, the spring before his death, to make 
 my friend, the Professor, a long-promised visit, and 
 to see him in his room at the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
 versity, occupied with his official duties, from which 
 he was so soon to be snatched away in the very 
 midst of his promise. 
 
 A superior intellect has passed out of our pre- 
 sent sight a clear-sighted and high-minded soul, 
 to whom fittingly applies the Horatian motto : 
 
 Integer vitae scelerisque purus. 
 70 
 
LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
 BENJAMIN KENDALL EMERSON, 
 
 Hitchcock Professor of Geology in Amherst College. 
 
 |EORGE WILLIAMS entered the class of '78 
 in Amherst College in September, 1874, 
 at the age of seventeen. He came well 
 prepared and took the Porter prize of that year, an 
 important prize given for the best entrance exam- 
 ination. He roomed alone during Freshman year, 
 and for the three following years his room-mate 
 was Mr. Frank Lusk Babbott, now of Brooklyn, 
 then of Watertown, N. Y., from whom I have ob- 
 tained many of the facts of the earlier portion of 
 Williams's college-life. 
 
 He joined the Alpha Delta Phi Society, and was 
 a most loyal member. He had strong social in- 
 stincts, and was very fond of attending any enter- 
 tainment where he would meet interesting people. 
 Opportunities of this sort were not then so frequent 
 at Amherst as now, but many homes were open 
 to him both here and in Northampton, and I have 
 heard of times when the young men of his set re- 
 paid their social debts to the young ladies in famous 
 entertainments at Northampton, where the ladies 
 71 
 
LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
 of the Amherst College families were glad to serve 
 as patronesses. 
 
 He had for such occasions very attractive man- 
 ners, and that refinement, which, while largely 
 inherited, was greatly enhanced by the life he had 
 led during youth, on account of his feeble health. 
 A certain quiet reserve marked his college years, 
 giving place later to an easier and more demon- 
 strative manner. Out of this, and of the beauty 
 of young manhood, which was his in an excep- 
 tional degree, arose the student name of "The 
 Archangel," by which he was well known by his 
 classmates. My wife writes as follows concern- 
 ing him at this time : 
 
 " I wish I could make a vivid pen-picture of 
 George Williams as I first saw him, and as mem- 
 ory still often recalls him, a more intimate know- 
 ledge of his maturer face never having obliterated 
 that first impression. It was during his Sopho- 
 more year in College, and he came to our door on 
 an errand. 
 
 "As the bell rang, I happened to be standing 
 near the door and opened it myself, and was 
 greeted by a picture of brilliant boyish beauty. 
 His face, much fuller then than when I saw it 
 later, still retained something of the roundness of 
 childhood. He was wholly a stranger to me and 
 I learned his name as he left it with his message, 
 but I was impressed by what seemed to me a glo- 
 rious beauty and his charming refinement of man- 
 72 
 
LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
 ner. Later, when he was an inmate of our house, 
 I came to love as well as to admire his face. As 
 he matured it changed greatly, the loss of color and 
 of luxuriant hair, and the wearing of glasses, ob- 
 literating much that was striking during earlier 
 life. But always the lines and the expression grew 
 keener and more attractive, and, as I saw him only 
 on occasions widely separated in time, I noted, 
 with delight, the increasing beauty of maturer 
 thought and experience. Yet the bright, rosy, boy 
 face, under the jaunty fur cap, is a very pleasant 
 memory." 
 
 He was always an earnest and hard working 
 student, careful in his preparation of the work for 
 the day, and particularly so in his preparation for 
 examinations ; and it was his habit at the end of 
 a course to make a written synopsis of the work, 
 and, after memorizing this, to proceed to details, 
 Thus he early acquired methodical habits and a 
 love of work. He stood always in the first half 
 dozen of his class, ranking highest in science and 
 mathematics. He was elected a member of the 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society in the middle of his Junior 
 year. 
 
 In the first of his course there was no sign of 
 specialization, but each study was prepared con- 
 scientiously. For two years a small Shakspere 
 club met in his room, and all his literary work in 
 his society and in the college was well and carefully 
 prepared. Until the middle of Junior year he was 
 
 73 
 
LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
 much in doubt as to what vocation he should fol- 
 low, and his mind turned most frequently to that 
 of architecture. 
 
 "During this time/' his room-mate writes me, 
 " we had very often in our rooms important works 
 upon art and architecture, to which George gave 
 many of his leisure moments. His natural aptitude 
 with the pen and pencil made this work seem very 
 attractive to him, and I thought, before he began 
 the study of the sciences, that he would take a course 
 in architecture after leaving Amherst. His work 
 in zoology and geology seemed to awaken greater 
 enthusiasm than, any other studies in his course. 
 It gave him an opportunity to use his pencil as 
 well as to do the most careful thinking, and those 
 branches were then begun with a zest which he 
 never relinquished/' 
 
 The division in zoology that year was an excep- 
 tionally strong one. The anatomical drawings of 
 invertebrates were elaborate and artistic, and Wil- 
 liams, who in any other division would have been 
 without a rival, was rivaled by only one man. The 
 work in crystallography attracted him immediately, 
 and he did a large amount of extra work in the 
 classification and arrangement of minerals. He 
 had already attracted my attention as a possible 
 geologist, and I set him much work with the pur- 
 pose of favoring this result. 
 
 His interest in geology was maintained through 
 Senior year, and he received the Shepard prize in 
 74 
 
LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
 mineralogy. He returned to Amherst for a post- 
 graduate year of study in zoology, and he was, 
 during this time, a member of my family. 
 
 During the autumn, his task consisted of the 
 study and mapping of the post-tertiary deposits 
 within a radius often miles of Amherst, and in the 
 progress of the work I had opportunity to watch 
 the intelligence and skill with which he acquired 
 the new methods of research, and years after it 
 gave me great pleasure to present to his wife the 
 artistic map which he prepared as the result of his 
 season's work. 
 
 In the winter I set him to select from the great 
 mass of duplicates of the college as complete a col- 
 lection of living invertebrates as possible, and to 
 name, classify and arrange them, as a preparation 
 for a corresponding study of the fossils of the older 
 formations, which he took up later. He also, un- 
 der my direction, and in conjunction with my 
 assistant, Professor John Mason Clarke, now of the 
 New York State Museum, devoted much time to 
 the arrangement of the collections of Smith College. 
 
 He left Amherst before the completion of the 
 year to fill a vacancy in the teaching force in the 
 academy at Utica, and then went to Europe for 
 further study. 
 
 I took a teacher's delight in the earnest and me- 
 thodical ways of the young man, in his keen and 
 outspoken criticism, his high enthusiasm, and in 
 marking how a strong artistic sense and a feeling 
 75 
 
LIFE AT AMHERST COLLEGE 
 
 for proportion molded all his work. It was a 
 pleasure at first to guide him, and then to watch 
 his further study in Europe, and his subsequent 
 career at home. 
 
 As the young man, who had been my scientific 
 son, became in the maturity of his power my sci- 
 entific brother, the sympathy born of kindred pur- 
 suits and long acquaintance grew very strong be- 
 tween us, and made me value most highly our 
 infrequent meetings. My return from a long jour- 
 ney was clouded by the news of his sudden de- 
 parture, with whom I had hoped to live over all 
 the scientific experiences of many months. 
 
 Amherst College, which had a large share in 
 nurturing him, shares with the University to which 
 she gave him, and where his brief and rich life 
 was spent, in the joy that he was able to do so 
 much, and in the sorrow that long years of good 
 work were not allotted him. 
 
 76 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 WILLLIAM BULLOCK CLARK 
 
 | S5 ||||HEN George Huntington Williams returned 
 ill to America, at the close of 1882, after 
 as^ls nearly four years spent in German Uni- 
 versities in preparation for his chosen profession, he 
 had in view no definite field of scientific activity, but 
 during a visit to Baltimore in the following March 
 he was offered and accepted the position of Fellow 
 by Courtesy in the Johns Hopkins University. Al- 
 though there was at that time no instruction in 
 Geology in that institution, and the position of- 
 fered to Dr. Williams did not admit him to the 
 Academic staff, it afforded just the opportunity 
 which he desired to take up work in this country 
 in the department of Microscopical Petrography, 
 that new field of geological investigation which 
 he was to be the first to introduce to American 
 students. 
 
 At the opening of the following academic year, 
 in the autumn of 1883, Dr. Williams was made 
 an Associate in the Faculty of the Johns Hopkins 
 University, and from that time forward began to 
 collect about him a body of enthusiastic pupils. 
 77 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 His success was so pronounced from the beginning 
 that his advancement came rapidly. In 1885 ne 
 became Associate Professor, and in 1 892 was made 
 Professor of Inorganic Geology. 
 
 From his very entrance into the service of the 
 University, Dr. Williams had directed his attention 
 to a study of the geology of Maryland, more espe- 
 cially the Piedmont area lying to the west of Balti- 
 more. Although this study was productive of 
 numerous scientific contributions, yet the oppor- 
 tunities for investigation were valued less as a field 
 for personal research than as nature's laboratory in 
 which young men might be trained in the most 
 exact methods of scientific investigation. In the 
 situation of the University Dr. Williams was most 
 fortunate. Readily accessible by short excursions, 
 he found representatives of all the main divisions 
 of the geological column, making it possible con- 
 stantly to illustrate the courses of instruction by 
 actual examination of the materials discussed. 
 This added greatly to the effectiveness of the 
 teacher's words, and not a little to the enthusiasm 
 with which the students entered into the work of 
 geological research. At times longer expeditions 
 were made across the State in cooperation with 
 others to study the structure of the mountainous 
 area of the Appalachian belt, or the coastal form- 
 ations of the Chesapeake Bay region. 
 
 Very early in the study of the local geology Dr. 
 Williams interested himself in the perfection of 
 78 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 the existing maps, in order that a suitable basis 
 might be had for the platting of the geological data 
 which he and his students were rapidly accumu- 
 lating. The Field Club map of the Baltimore Na- 
 turalists' Field Club, embracing an area of 625 
 square miles, with Baltimore as a center, was di- 
 vided by Dr. Williams into twenty-five sections. 
 The plan which he devised is described in the fol- 
 lowing words : " These sections are to be worked 
 out separately, although of course according to a 
 uniform plan ; and each is to be accompanied by a 
 separate text to contain descriptions of the geology 
 and petrography of its area, as well as explanations 
 of the relationship of these to those of the adjoin- 
 ing sheets. 
 
 "It is believed that this method of work will 
 prove of increased value to the student by allow- 
 ing him, after securing a general idea of the geol- 
 ogy of the whole region, to confine his attention 
 to special work in a particular field, and by incit- 
 ing him to make a permanent contribution to the 
 geological map as a whole. Such material upon 
 one or more sections will form acceptable material 
 for a thesis for the Doctor's Degree." 
 
 This plan was carried out for a time until the 
 map was supplanted by the new topographic sheets 
 of the United States Geological Survey, when the 
 scope of the work was extended into more distant 
 portions of the State. 
 
 While engaged primarily in the study of local 
 
 79 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 geology, Dr. Williams took up other problems dur- 
 ing his absence from Baltimore in vacation time, 
 collecting data and specimens that formed the basis 
 for subsequent examinations in the laboratory of 
 the University. In all of these investigations his 
 students were closely identified with him, and 
 gained much from the almost daily association that 
 was thus afforded them. His home was always 
 open to them, and many evenings were spent in 
 social intercourse and in informal readings upon 
 geological subjects. 
 
 A far more permanent result of this constant 
 personal contact was the firm bond of sympathy 
 which was formed between instructor and pupil, 
 and which lasted beyond University days. As 
 successes and honors came from time to time to 
 those who had been thus closely associated with 
 him, his pleasure and satisfaction were most pro- 
 nounced. Their interests were always his interests 
 and remained so to the end. 
 
 As an instructor, Professor Williams had few 
 equals. His enthusiastic delivery in the class- 
 room lecture made the most abstruse subject fas- 
 cinating, while his lucid interpretation of difficult 
 points inspired the confidence of those who heard 
 him. There was scarcely anything connected with 
 his scientific career which gave him so much pleas- 
 ure as his class-room duties, since he had an in- 
 structive appreciation of his ability as a teacher, 
 and enjoyed the manifest interest which he unfail- 
 80 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 ingly aroused. Those who have listened to his 
 lectures will not soon forget his power. 
 
 The natural instincts of the teacher are shown 
 in the character of many of his publications, which 
 were of a more or less pedagogical nature. Many 
 of these had their inspiration in the requirements 
 of his own classes, while others came from a de- 
 sire to more widely give influence to the ideas 
 which he entertained. In the former category 
 may be mentioned his " Elements of Crystallogra- 
 phy/' while in the latter were his " Modern Geog- 
 raphy" in Heath's Monographs on Education, 
 " Some Modern Aspects of Geology" in The Popu- 
 lar Science Monthly, and "The Microscope, and 
 the Study of the Crystalline Schists" in Science. 
 
 But the services of Professor Williams to the 
 University were not confined to his immediate du- 
 ties in the class-room or even to his wider influ- 
 ence as a writer upon geological subjects, those 
 attainments which more particularly characterize 
 him as teacher. He was, in addition to all these, 
 a gifted public speaker, and on many occasions 
 has been asked to talk before scientific institutions 
 and societies, twice being called upon to deliver 
 addresses before his own University upon Anni- 
 versary days. 
 
 His first formal public lectures were given in 
 
 January, 1885, at the Johns Hopkins University, 
 
 the course consisting of three lectures and entitled 
 
 " The Present Aspect of Inorganic Geology." In 
 
 " 81 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 January, 1887, ne again gave a public lecture "On 
 the Geology of the Region about Baltimore " in a 
 course upon the natural history of the area, in 
 which many of the scientific staff of the University 
 participated. 
 
 The following year he delivered one of the Sat- 
 urday lectures at the United States National Mu- 
 seum, under the auspices of the Scientific Societies 
 of Washington, upon "The Microscope in Geol- 
 ogy/' In June of the same year he was asked to 
 give the Commencement address before the Wor- 
 cester Polytechnic Institute, and chose for his sub- 
 ject, " Some Modern Aspects of Geology/' This 
 was one of the best of his public utterances, and in 
 it he presented clearly his conception of his own 
 science, while at the same time in his broader gen- 
 eralizations he set forth what he regarded as the 
 true scientific basis of technical training. 
 
 Early in 1 890, Professor Williams gave two pub- 
 lic lectures at the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, 
 upon "The Geology of Maryland" and "Moun- 
 tains." 
 
 Other public lectures and addresses followed, 
 but the most important were those delivered on 
 Anniversary days before the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
 versity. The first of these was given on Febru- 
 ary 22, 1892, and was entitled " A University and 
 its Natural Environment/' 
 
 In introducing the theme, he said : " The two 
 parts of my subject A University and its Na- 
 82 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 tural Environment appear, at first glance, to be 
 but remotely connected. Have not Universities, 
 it will be asked, in all ages flourished amid most 
 diverse surroundings ? This is indeed true ; and 
 yet, while not claiming for natural environment a 
 paramount importance in University development, 
 I desire to show that the accident of location brings, 
 to certain departments at least, questions of vital 
 import. If the environment be favorable, the ad- 
 vantages resulting therefrom are incalculable ; but 
 with them come responsibilities which no Uni- 
 versity can either ignore or shirk/' 
 
 In the course of his address, speaking of the ma- 
 terials with which the different departments of a 
 University deal, he said : " There are certain lines 
 of University work which are very sensitive to, 
 nay, well-nigh conditioned by, their natural envi- 
 ronment. If this offers what is necessary, they 
 are fortunate ; but if it be unfavorable, they must 
 remove to a more suitable locality, or suffer their 
 success to be proportionately impaired. Among 
 all the departments of human knowledge which it 
 is the sphere of the University to encourage, there 
 is none more dependent on the accident of geo- 
 graphical location than Geology/' 
 
 Referring to the influence of this environment 
 upon many of the great University centers of Eu- 
 rope, he spoke as follows regarding the unparal- 
 leled surroundings of Baltimore in this respect. 
 He said: "Thus it is that by a fortunate geo- 
 83 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 graphical location the 10,000 square miles of 
 Maryland's area contain a representative of every 
 geological period, from the earliest to that now in 
 progress. Indeed, we may say, without exagger- 
 ation, that no State in the Union contains a fuller 
 geologic sequence, and there are few areas of like ex- 
 tent in the world where the record is so complete/' 
 
 In the later address, given the following year, 
 under the title of " Recent Studies of the State of 
 Maryland/' he still further showed the importance 
 of the scientific work of the University to the com- 
 munity. It was this appreciation of the interde- 
 pendence of the University and the State in the field 
 of geological research which led to the inaugura- 
 tion of many lines of investigation that brought 
 the University into practical touch with the people 
 and proved of advantage to each. 
 
 As the greater proportion of Professor Williams' 
 investigations was carried on within the limits of 
 the State, so his scientific writings largely deal di- 
 rectly with its geology. Collectively they form 
 the most extensive contribution of any single in- 
 vestigator in that field, and any future work along 
 the lines which he inaugurated will of necessity be 
 based upon his results. 
 
 Through his work upon the geology of the Pied- 
 mont belt not alone have we acquired a scientific 
 understanding of its structure, but also a practical 
 knowledge of its various mineral products that 
 must prove of lasting value to the State. 
 84 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 In many of his contributions a discussion of the 
 economic resources has found place, while two 
 publications, prepared in conjunction with others, 
 deal largely with that phase of the subject. One 
 of these was the guide-book prepared for the meet- 
 ing of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 
 held in Baltimore, February, 1892, in which was 
 incorporated the geological and economic map of 
 Baltimore and vicinity, embodying the results of 
 work carried on under the auspices of the United 
 States Geological Survey. 
 
 A much more comprehensive publication was 
 that prepared by Professor Williams upon the geol- 
 ogy and economic resources of the State, for the 
 World's Fair Book of Maryland. For this volume 
 he prepared a geological map, which, as he stated, 
 was " compiled from all existing sources of infor- 
 mation, and contains the result of much geological 
 work within the confines of the State which has 
 never before been published." Although recog- 
 nizing its incomplete character he says, "It 
 thoroughly represents the present state of our 
 knowledge and will serve as a definite point of 
 departure for future work by showing where the 
 existing data are least satisfactory/' As the second 
 geological map of Maryland, the first having been 
 prepared by P. T. Tyson, in 1860, it deserves 
 great credit and marks a distinct advance in the 
 knowledge of the geology and mineral products 
 of the State. 
 
 85 
 
HIS WORK AS A PROFESSOR 
 
 Thus in every way Professor Williams strove to 
 show the value of the scientific work of the Uni- 
 versity to the community, and, in so doing, aided 
 largely in cementing those feelings of good will 
 which exist between the Johns Hopkins University 
 and the people of the State. 
 
 In all his relations to the University during the 
 twelve years he was connected with it, Professor 
 Williams sought its advancement with a loyalty 
 which was cordially appreciated by all friends of 
 the institution. 
 
 86 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 JOSEPH PAXSON IDDINGS 
 
 F would be a difficult task to adequately 
 review the numerous papers and longer 
 writings by Professor Williams which 
 have been published during his short career as an 
 investigator. Although twelve years only elapsed 
 between his graduation at Heidelberg and his death, 
 the list of his publications, which is appended to 
 this memorial, shows remarkable activity. Few 
 articles were published in more than one place ; 
 though, of course, there were preliminary notices 
 of work that afterwards appeared in complete and 
 elaborate form. Any one who attempts to review 
 carefully all of the publications, and who considers 
 the many reviews written by Professor Williams 
 for journals in this country, and for the " Neues 
 Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie, Geologic und Palaeon- 
 tologie," in Germany, to which latter journal he con- 
 tributed sixty-eight reviews between the years 
 1 884 and 1 890, must be impressed with the amount 
 of work Professor Williams accomplished, in addi- 
 tion to his faithfully executed duties as an instructor 
 in the University. 
 
 87 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 These are convincing evidences of his ceaseless 
 industry, a characteristic that was well known to 
 all who were intimately associated with him. It 
 showed itself in his habit of devoting any moment, 
 however short or interrupted, to reading some new 
 publication, or to writing notes upon his work. 
 Nor is it simply the constant application, and the 
 volume of the matter, that compel our admiration. 
 Much more important and admirable are the quali- 
 ties of the work and the methods employed in its 
 execution. The subject matter is good, and often 
 bears directly upon essential principles. Its ex- 
 pression is concise and clear ; full enough to avoid 
 ambiguity, and definite enough to permit one to 
 judge whether a statement is to be taken as an es- 
 tablished fact, a reasonable hypothesis, or a tenta- 
 tive suggestion. The arrangement of the material 
 is such as to strengthen the argument ; while his 
 ability to delineate objects, and his artistic sense, 
 greatly aid the manner of its presentation. The 
 effectiveness of his labors was very largely in- 
 creased, no doubt, by his systematic methods of 
 work. His notes were well written, orderly ar- 
 ranged, and usually quite full. And he had the en- 
 viable habit of finishing up work as he went along. 
 His executive ability was well developed and unos- 
 tentatious. Any one associated with him was 
 aware of the fact that he was very busy, but was 
 not called upon to recognize the fact that his busi- 
 ness was very important. The absence of egotism 
 88 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 is noticeable in his writings, and has been com- 
 mented upon by an English correspondent. His 
 interest was always concentrated on the object of 
 his investigation, which is not only evident in his 
 writings, but was more apparent in his conversa- 
 tions about his work. Any personal ambitions he 
 might, with perfect propriety, have entertained, 
 were not noticeable to his most intimate associates. 
 And, judging from the freedom with which he 
 shared most of his thoughts with his closest friends, 
 it is probable he would have expressed his reasona- 
 ble hopes of honorable recognition, if they had been 
 prominently in his mind. Honors that came to 
 him were unsought, but not unappreciated. The 
 approbation of those able to judge must always be 
 cherished by one who is not dominated by a feel- 
 ing of infallibility and self-sufficiency. 
 
 It is not for the present writer to attempt a ju- 
 dicial estimate of the publications of Professor 
 Williams. Not only would such an attitude be pre- 
 sumptuous on his part, but the possibility of form- 
 ing a correct estimate of the work is denied one 
 who has stood in such close relationship to the 
 worker. A proper estimate can only come from 
 some one whose ability is unquestioned, and whose 
 remoteness from the object is sufficient to permit 
 a more comprehensive view of its proportions. 
 
 A very brief and incomplete sketch is all the 
 writer has to offer, and in so doing he cannot but 
 feel how inadequate it will be to convey anything 
 12 89 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 like a fair conception of the extent and merits of 
 Professor Williams' published work. It is scarcely 
 more than a mention of what he has written. 
 Fortunately the articles themselves are accessible 
 to all students, and are endowed with a lasting vi- 
 tality that enables them to live beyond the memory 
 of the personality that created them, and to speak 
 for themselves so long as they can be of service. 
 
 His first contribution to petrography was a de- 
 scription of " Glaucophane-rocks from Northern 
 Italy/' published in 1882, the material having been 
 collected during an excursion into that country 
 while a student at Heidelberg. This was followed 
 in 1883 by his Inaugural Dissertation on "The 
 Rocks of the Neighborhood of Tryberg in the Black 
 Forest/' in which he describes the geological oc- 
 currence and petrographical characters of the gneiss 
 and granite, and of the acid and basic dike-rocks 
 of the region. In this paper we recognize the 
 thoroughness and care which characterize all his 
 subsequent work. Upon his return to this coun- 
 try in the fall of 1882 he at once found a position in 
 the Johns Hopkins University as an associate in the 
 chemical department under Professor Remsen, his 
 duties being those of instructor in crystallography 
 and mineralogy. No provision was at that time 
 made for the development of petrology and of geol- 
 ogy, except as he might himself provide. Accept- 
 ing the situation, he turned his attention to the 
 existing conditions, and contributed to ' ' The Amer- 
 90 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 ican Chemical Journal " a review of Fouque and 
 Michel-Levy's work on The Synthesis of Minerals 
 and Rocks, in which he pointed out the impor- 
 tance of synthetical methods in the development 
 of science, and what had already been accom- 
 plished in this direction for mineralogy and petrol- 
 ogy. He also published in the same journal an 
 article on the relations of crystallography to chem- 
 istry, calling attention to the fundamental connec- 
 tion which must exist between the chemical mole- 
 cule and the various physical properties developed 
 in any crystallized compound, including the crys- 
 tallographic form. In this way he showed the im- 
 portance of crystallography as an adjunct to chem- 
 istry, and the field that lay open to workers in 
 physical chemistry. Subsequently he contributed 
 to the same journal articles on the crystal form of 
 metallic cadmium and of metallic zinc, the latter in 
 conjunction with Mr. W. M. Burton. He at once 
 began work on the geology of the region surround- 
 ing Baltimore, and in the spring of 1884 he pub- 
 lished in the Johns Hopkins "University Circular" 
 a preliminary notice of the gabbros and associated 
 hornblende rocks in the vicinity of Baltimore, and 
 later a note on the so-called quartz-porphyry of 
 Hollins Station, north of Baltimore. In the autumn 
 of the same year he undertook the study of a group 
 of massive rocks occurring on the Hudson river 
 near Peekskill, N. Y., to which his attention had 
 been called by Prof. James D. Dana. The first re- 
 91 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 suit of this work was a paper on the " Paramor- 
 phosis of Pyroxene to Hornblende," setting forth 
 what was already known on the chemical and 
 physical relations between these two minerals, 
 and emphasizing the opinion suggested by J. Leh- 
 mann that the change might be due to simple 
 pressure, tending to rearrange the molecules of 
 pyroxene in a more stable manner, as perhaps in 
 hornblende. 
 
 In the spring of 1885 he published an abstract 
 of a paper read by him some months before on 
 " Dikes of Apparently Eruptive Granite in theNeigh- 
 borhood of Baltimore/' In it he showed very clearly 
 that large veins of coarse-grained granite, which 
 traverse the crystalline schists, exhibit all the char- 
 acteristics of eruptive rocks, whose intrusion was 
 subsequent to the metamorphism of the containing 
 rocks. 
 
 About the same time he described some in- 
 stances of the alteration of pyroxene directly into 
 compact hornblende. 
 
 The conclusions announced in the preliminary 
 notice of the gabbros and associated hornblende 
 rocks near Baltimore were the same as those in- 
 corporated in the complete report on these rocks, 
 which appeared two years later as Bulletin 28 of 
 the United States Geological Survey. The chief 
 features of this report, beyond the description of 
 the geological occurrence and of the petrographical 
 characters of the rocks, are the demonstrations of 
 92 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 the genetic relation between the gabbro and diorite, 
 and of the probable derivation of the latter from 
 the former by metamorphism. The chemical and 
 physical relations between pyroxene and horn- 
 blende are again discussed, and while the efficacy 
 of pressure alone is considered sufficient to bring 
 about this alteration, it is remarked that it is not 
 to be regarded as a necessary factor in all cases, 
 and that in the region in question near Baltimore 
 evidences of pressure are not directly connected 
 with the uralitization of the pyroxene. To indicate 
 that his suggestions are to be taken as speculation 
 he observes in conclusion : 
 
 "In point of fact we know at present almost 
 nothing of what determines the crystalline form of 
 the bisilicate in a molten magma, and still less do 
 we understand the ultimate cause of the sub- 
 sequent alteration of one form into the other a 
 change which is to be regarded as in no way allied 
 to weathering or the degeneration of a rock, but 
 rather as a transition from one crystalline state to 
 another no less crystalline, dependent on some 
 change in physical conditions." There simply re- 
 mains the fact that the change has taken place in 
 numerous instances. 
 
 In the year 1884 appeared J. Lehmann's great 
 work on the origin of the crystalline schists (" Ent- 
 stehung der altkrystallinen Schiefergesteine "), 
 which exerted a powerful influence on the mind 
 and ideas of Professor Williams, as it has on other 
 93 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 petrologists. He eagerly assimilated its ideas and 
 prepared two reviews of it which appeared soon 
 afterward. Subsequently he received a suite of 
 specimens from Professor Lehmann, illustrating 
 his work, which convinced him of the correctness 
 of his conclusions, and of the probable derivation 
 of many crystalline schists from originally massive, 
 igneous rocks, by processes of metamorphism, one 
 of the chief factors of which may have been dy- 
 namic forces. 
 
 In 1885 Professor Williams became associate 
 professor in the Johns Hopkins University, and es- 
 tablished a laboratory for petrographical work, the 
 importance of which as a factor in geological sci- 
 ence he advocated in an article entitled ' ' The Mi- 
 croscope in Geology," printed in "Science" for 
 that year. In this he briefly sketches what has 
 already been done, chiefly in the realm of igneous 
 rocks, and indicates that the great future of this 
 line of investigation lies in unraveling the compli- 
 cated changes of metamorphism. 
 
 The application of the microscope to the study 
 of geology was presented again the next year in a 
 more expanded form as one of a series of mono- 
 graphs on education, published by D. C. Heath 
 & Co., entitled " Modern Petrography/' The his- 
 tory and methods of petrographical work were 
 sketched, and the application of the study to vari- 
 ous phases of geology was noted, and a bibliog- 
 raphy relating to the leading books on the subject 
 94 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 was appended. During these years and those that 
 followed, to 1 890, he was contributing reviews and 
 notices of American geological and petrographical 
 literature to the " Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie, 
 etc.," in all some sixty-eight articles ; besides keep- 
 ing up through 1885, for the ' ' American Naturalist, " 
 a Summary of the Progress in Mineralogy and Pet- 
 rography in that year, in addition to which he pre- 
 pared several other reviews of greater length. 
 
 The results of his study of the massive rocks 
 near Peekskill, N. Y., were embodied in four pa- 
 pers published in the ' ' American Journal of Science " 
 from 1886 to 1888. These rocks constitute the 
 Cortlandt series and include peridotites, norites, 
 gabbros, and diorites. Of these there are numer- 
 ous varieties which grade into one another so that 
 they " present an admirable example of what are 
 called facies of a geological unit mass/' They 
 were not necessarily erupted at one time, but were 
 probably produced at different periods during an 
 era of prolonged volcanic activity. They probably 
 rose through several vents, and solidified at a con- 
 siderable depth below the surface, being brought 
 to light by erosion. The most diverse types are 
 peripheral in their distribution. 
 
 The contact-metamorphism produced by these 
 intrusions upon the surrounding mica-schists and 
 limestone was also described. In the former the 
 intensity of the metamorphism is directly propor- 
 tional to the nearness of the schist to the massive 
 
 95 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 rocks. And at the contact the schistose structure 
 almost wholly disappears and the rock becomes 
 hard and massive. Numerous contact minerals 
 have been developed, the list of which contains 
 eighteen species. 
 
 Among his contributions to purely microscopi- 
 cal petrography were : his description of a suite 
 of igneous rocks, collected by Professor]. C. Branner 
 on the island of Fernando de Noronha ; notes on 
 the microscopical character of rocks from the Sud- 
 bury mining district in Canada, collected by Dr. 
 Robert Bell; and notes on some eruptive rocks 
 from Alaska, collected by Professor H. F. Reid and 
 Mr. H. P. Gushing. These studies were necessar- 
 ily limited to the microscopical investigation of thin 
 sections, and were supplemental to more or less 
 satisfactory descriptions of the occurrences of the 
 rocks by those who collected them. 
 
 The importance of microscopical investigation 
 of aphanitic rocks in deciphering their true char- 
 acter and origin is clearly shown by Professor 
 Williams' study of the serpentine occurring at 
 Syracuse, N. Y., in the Onondaga salt-group. 
 This rock acquired interest from the writings 
 of Vanuxem and Sterry Hunt, who ascribed 
 its formation to hydro-chemical processes. The 
 microscopical investigation proved that the struc- 
 ture and microscopic characters of the serpentine 
 and of the minerals included in it were precisely 
 analogous to those of serpentine derived from the 
 96 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 alteration of igneous rocks rich in olivine. The 
 presence of perovskite was determined. Subse- 
 quently excavations for city improvements uncov- 
 ered the body of rock previously covered, and 
 disclosed its actual eruptive character. 
 
 Professor Williams' account of his trip in 
 southern and western Norway in company with 
 Professors Rosenbusch, Brogger, Reusch, and Law- 
 son shows his keen appreciation of the phenom- 
 ena of metamorphism, which are exhibited in that 
 region on so grand a scale, and which have been 
 so ably described by the Norwegian geologists. 
 The observations he thus had the opportunity of 
 making on contact- and regional metamorphism 
 proved of inestimable value to him in his subse- 
 quent work. 
 
 Among his contributions to the terminology 
 of petrography is a discussion and definition of 
 the terms poikilitic and micropoikilitic. His inter- 
 est in the advancement of the working methods 
 of the science showed itself in the suggestions 
 made to the firm of Bausch and Lomb of Roches- 
 ter, N. Y., regarding the manufacture of a first- 
 class petrographical microscope, and in his de- 
 scription of a machine for cutting and grinding rock 
 sections. 
 
 Accounts of the geological excursions with his 
 
 students across the western part of Maryland were 
 
 published, as well as the general plan of field work 
 
 which he proposed having the students carry on 
 
 13 97 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 in connection with their University duties. This 
 plan contemplated the division of the 625 square 
 miles of territory embraced within the published 
 map of the environs of Baltimore into areas con- 
 taining 25 square miles each, and the allotment of 
 one of these divisions to a student as a subject for 
 his graduating thesis. This plan he was success- 
 fully carrying forward. 
 
 In addition to his petrographical work Professor 
 Williams made numerous contributions to miner- 
 alogy, partly in connection with his studies of 
 rocks, and partly on independent material. The 
 list of his mineralogical papers includes descriptions 
 of at least twenty species. The descriptions usu- 
 ally embraced their crystallographic and chemical 
 properties, and sometimes their associations and 
 origin. Of special importance were his discussions 
 of the possibility of hemihedrism in the monoclinic 
 crystal system, with special reference to the hemi- 
 hedrism of pyroxene ; and of the proper orienta- 
 tion of amphibole, as shown by a comparison of 
 its gliding plane with that commonly met with in 
 pyroxene. The full list of his writings in this de- 
 partment of science will be found in the complete 
 bibliography of his publications appended to this 
 sketch. 
 
 His most valuable service in this direction was 
 the text-book of crystallography, called "Ele- 
 ments of Crystallography," which he published 
 in 1890, an octavo of 250 pages, with 383 figures 
 98 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 and two plates, which has passed into its third 
 edition. 
 
 In this work the subject of crystallography is 
 set forth in a clear, simple manner upon the basis 
 of the symmetry of the crystal forms, and without 
 recourse to mathematics. It was intended to 
 teach the relationships of the forms to one another 
 in the simplest and at the same time most logical 
 manner. At the time when it was written it rep- 
 resented the advanced methods of treatment then 
 in use in Germany. The more recent advancement 
 in crystallographic conceptions was taking strong 
 hold on Professor Williams during the last year 
 of his life, and was being used by him with suc- 
 cess in his course of instruction. The substance 
 of these ideas was embodied in a short chapter 
 introduced into the third edition of his book. In 
 this, as in all of his other work, he showed his 
 wonderful ability to assimilate all that was new 
 and valuable, and his readiness to move forward 
 in the front ranks of all co-workers in each of 
 the departments of science in which he was 
 engaged. 
 
 In July, 1890, he published a description of the 
 non-feldspathic rocks of Maryland, intending to 
 follow it with others upon their various modes of 
 alteration. The various kinds of rocks composed 
 almost wholly of pyroxene without olivine are 
 shown to pass into one another by transitions, 
 forming a connected group. He proposed to con- 
 
 99 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 fine the term pyroxenite to the non-feldspathic 
 pyroxene rocks free from olivine that are distinctly 
 eruptive in origin. And he suggested websterite 
 as the name for enstatite-diopside rocks. 
 
 By the end of this year he prepared a paper on 
 the petrography and structure of the Piedmont 
 plateau of Maryland, in which he described the 
 general topography of the region, and the geo- 
 logical structure of that portion of the State lying 
 between the mountains, in the western part, and 
 the coastal plain in the eastern part of the State, 
 and known as the Piedmont plateau. In this work 
 we find him enlarging the scope of his researches, 
 and passing beyond the boundaries of mineralogy 
 and petrography to embrace the larger problems 
 of dynamical and structural geology. However, 
 the character of the paper is largely petrographical, 
 as its title indicates. 
 
 The more or less metamorphosed rocks of the 
 western half of the plateau region, and the highly 
 metamorphosed ones of the eastern half, together 
 with the igneous rocks connected with them, were 
 described or noted, and their characters considered 
 with reference to the probable origin of the geo- 
 logical structure ; the general conclusion being that 
 the eastern area is composed of rocks far more an- 
 cient than the western. These were the floor upon 
 which the western rocks were deposited. At the 
 time of the Appalachian uplift the crystalline floor 
 underwent a final folding which involved the over- 
 
 100 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 lying sediments, which were metamorphosed to 
 some extent. The precise determination of the 
 age of the rocks, and the elaboration of many de- 
 tails of structure and petrography, were among the 
 problems noted for future investigation. In this 
 work he had the assistance of his students, and the 
 financial support of the United States Geological 
 Survey a combination of forces which proved 
 of mutual advantage, and furnished a valuable 
 foundation for the class-room and laboratory in- 
 struction at the university. 
 
 The benefits to be derived from such coopera- 
 tion, and from the actual field experience, which 
 his students were thus able to carry on under his 
 guidance, were fully appreciated by himself, and 
 formed the text for an address before the univer- 
 sity in February, 1892. In this address he made 
 an able plea for the claims of geology upon the in- 
 terests of the people of the State, and of the de- 
 partment of geology upon the support of the uni- 
 versity. He reviewed the history of geological 
 investigations within the State of Maryland, and 
 called attention to the exceptional advantages of- 
 fered by the geological structure of the State to the 
 student, noting its scope and the accessibility of 
 the field. He spoke of what was being done to- 
 ward mapping the country and toward determin- 
 ing the character of the rock formations, whose 
 nature bore directly upon the agricultural interests 
 of the State. The evident connection between 
 
 101 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 geology and the development of the mineral re- 
 sources was also mentioned. 
 
 A general review of the geology of the crystalline 
 rocks of Baltimore and its vicinity was prepared 
 about this time by Professor Williams for the 
 Guide Book published for the meeting of the Amer- 
 ican Institute of Mining Engineers held in Baltimore 
 in February of that year. This account was ac- 
 companied by a geological map of the region about 
 Baltimore, made for the United States Geological 
 Survey by Professor Williams and Mr. N. H. 
 Darton. 
 
 A revised edition of this map was published in 
 October of the same year by the Johns Hopkins 
 University under the direction of Professor Wil- 
 liams, who introduced many improvements into 
 the system of coloration. Having become inter- 
 ested in the preparation of a map of Maryland, he 
 investigated the history of map-making in the State: 
 and with the assistance of the Superintendent of 
 the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Pro- 
 fessor T. C. Mendenhall ; the chief topographer 
 of the United States Geological Survey, Mr. Henry 
 Gannet; and others, he prepared an exhaustive ac- 
 count of topographic maps made of various parts 
 of Maryland. 
 
 His explorations with his students at times led 
 him beyond the borders of the State, and it was 
 upon one of these excursions that he discovered 
 igneous rocks whose structure and habit were 
 
 102 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 such as to suggest their being surficial volcanic 
 lavas. They were located on the northern border 
 line, at South Mountain, in Pennsylvania and Mary- 
 land. Having allotted to Miss Florence Bascom 
 the detailed study of a part of this region, he under- 
 took himself its general exploration. The results 
 of this study were so important that he published 
 a general account of it immediately, before the more 
 detailed studies were completed. It showed the 
 existence in that locality of volcanic lavas and tuff- 
 breccias of rhyolites and basalts with intrusive 
 bodies of the same rocks, which are pre-Cambrian 
 in age. The metamorphism they have experienced 
 has not been sufficient to obliterate their general 
 original structure, or to destroy entirely their orig- 
 inal minerals. They are quite the same as 
 modern lavas of similar composition, and are ex- 
 actly analogous to volcanic rocks of pre-Cambrian 
 age in the Lake Superior region and in Great 
 Britain. The importance of finding ancient vol- 
 canic lavas on the eastern seabord led Professor 
 Williams to look into the possibility of other simi- 
 lar occurrences in this part of the continent. 
 
 As a result of this investigation, made partly by 
 the study of published accounts, partly by personal 
 correspondence, and to some extent by field ob- 
 servation, he was able to present a preliminary 
 notice of the distribution of ancient volcanic rocks 
 along the eastern border of North America at the 
 International Geological Congress in Chicago, in 
 103 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 August, 1 893 . The completed paper was read be- 
 fore the Geological Society of America at its Boston 
 meeting in December of the same year, and was pub- 
 lished in the "Journal of Geology" a month later. 
 This is the last of his more important publications. 
 It commences with a historical review of opinions 
 on ancient volcanic rocks in foreign lands as well 
 as in this, which is treated with his characteristic 
 thoroughness. He then discusses the criteria for 
 the recognition of ancient volcanic rocks, setting 
 them forth in a clear and systematic manner. He 
 defines volcanic rocks as "igneous or pyroclastic 
 material which has solidified or been deposited at, 
 or very near, the earth's surface/' 
 
 In describing the distribution of these rocks in 
 Canada he cites numerous statements of Canadian 
 geologists as to the occurrence of volcanic rocksin 
 the ancient terranes of that region . And the greater 
 part of all of the known occurrences fall within the 
 boundaries of Canada, Nova Scotia, and Newfound- 
 land. Within the United States much less is known 
 of these rocks, and inferences were drawn from 
 the descriptions of those who have studied the 
 metamorphosed rocks of New England and of the 
 Middle Atlantic and Southern States . Occurrences 
 are definitely known in Maine, Massachusetts, 
 Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Car- 
 olina. Probable occurrences are indicated in Maine, 
 New York, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, 
 and Georgia. 
 
 104 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 Professor Williams considered it the purpose of 
 this communication to direct attention to these 
 occurrences of ancient volcanic rocks, and to excite 
 interest in their further investigation. It is one 
 of the many regrets we must all feel that he was 
 not himself permitted to carry forward this impor- 
 tant line of investigation. It is to be hoped that 
 the petrographers of the eastern States will prose- 
 cute this work in their several fields with the en- 
 ergy and enthusiasm Professor Williams would 
 have instilled into it. 
 
 In connection with other members of the faculty 
 of the Johns Hopkins University, Professor Williams 
 prepared a book on the "Natural Features, Re- 
 sources, and Institutions of the State of Maryland," 
 at the request of the Board of World's Fair Man- 
 agers of that State. His own portion of the work 
 embraced the editing of a new geological map of 
 the State based upon work done by himself and 
 other members of the United States Geological 
 Survey, and a general sketch of the topography 
 and geology of the State, with an account of the 
 mines and mineral industries. 
 
 The map is conspicuous for its clearness and 
 artistic coloring, and has earned merited praise 
 from those best able to judge. The text is well 
 illustrated with views of topographical features and 
 characteristic rock exposures. Valuable descrip- 
 tions of the topographic and climatic features of the 
 State were contributed by Professor W. B. Clark. 
 M 105 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 The arrangement of facts and the clearness and 
 manner of expression of that portion of the book 
 specially relating to the geology and physical fea- 
 tures, which was issued subsequently as a separate 
 publication, elicited the admiration of Professor 
 Williams' colleagues at home and abroad, one of 
 whom has characterized it as " a new publication 
 which can be presented as a model to students," 
 an expression that has been taken from the private 
 correspondence of one of the ablest European geol- 
 ogists of the present day. 
 
 His last writings were in connection with the 
 preparation of the "Standard Dictionary/' to which 
 he contributed mineralogical and petrographical 
 definitions, and also in connection with the revision 
 of Johnson's "Universal Cyclopaedia." 
 
 Professor Williams' most valuable publication 
 in petrography is his paper on " The Greenstone- 
 Schist Areas of the Menominee and Marquette Re- 
 gions of Michigan," which, as he intended it, is 
 indeed " A Contribution to the Subject of Dynamic 
 Metamorphism in Eruptive Rocks." The field 
 studies were made in the summers of 1885 and 
 1 886, and the report was transmitted for publica- 
 tion in February, 1888. 
 
 The report is valuable not only for the new ma- 
 terial and the demonstrations of metamorphism 
 contained in it, but almost as much for the thor- 
 ough presentation of the work already done by 
 others in this direction. It illustrated most per- 
 106 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 fectly Professor Williams' prominent characteris- 
 tics as a student and teacher : his ample informa- 
 tion regarding what has already been accomplished 
 by others, his own painstaking and conscientious 
 investigation of the material in hand, and his sys- 
 tematic treatment of the observations in order 
 to demonstrate the conclusions he had himself 
 reached. 
 
 The chapter setting forth the present state of 
 knowledge regarding the metamorphism of igneous 
 rocks is masterful, and, though limited to thirty 
 pages, contains 166 references. In the introduc- 
 tory paragraphs upon the value of microscopical 
 work in the study of metamorphism we find some 
 of his ideas expressed in so clear a manner that 
 they may well be repeated here, in order to furnish 
 an insight into the processes of his mind, and to 
 show the principles that guided his work and 
 formed the inspiration of his hopes. 
 
 The mission of microscopical petrography is set 
 forth in the following words : 
 
 "The recent multiplication of refined methods 
 for the investigation of crystalline rocks, however, 
 has opened an almost new field of geological in- 
 quiry. The difficult and obscure problems here 
 presented may now be attacked by truly scientific 
 methods. The prophecies which Hermann Vogel- 
 sang made in 1867 for the new departure in geol- 
 ogy have been more than realized within the last 
 twenty years. The almost new science of petrog- 
 107 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 raphy may be said to have proved itself capable 
 of rendering, in the study of the crystalline rocks, 
 a service equal to that which paleontology has al- 
 ready given in the deciphering and correlating of 
 the fossiliferous strata/' 
 
 Comparing the study of unaltered rocks with 
 that of metamorphosed ones he says : 
 
 ' ' But if petrography were able to solve satisfac- 
 torily all the problems presented by the unaltered 
 massive rocks, it would even then be prepared 
 only to commence its most difficult and most im- 
 portant mission. Rocks are in reality far from 
 being the dead, inert, stationary masses which 
 they appear to the ordinary observer. The fasci- 
 nating study of chemical geology, especially when 
 aided by the microscope, shows them to be in a 
 state of almost constant change. It is true that 
 some of the oldest rocks seem to have suffered 
 hardly any alteration since they were first formed, 
 but most of them are ever active laboratories 
 where old products are being pulled to pieces and 
 new ones built up. The tracing out of such 
 changes is an important aim of petrography in its 
 present stage/' 
 
 In his endeavor to emphasize the widespread 
 occurrence of metamorphism and the tendency of 
 many minerals to alter their form and composition 
 with changes in their surrounding physical condi- 
 tion, he has perhaps overdrawn the case, since the 
 permanence of many rocks and minerals through 
 
 108 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 countless ages and under conditions that must have 
 varied considerably is one of the most notable facts 
 of petrology, which he himself would have been 
 the readiest to acknowledge. The extreme empha- 
 sis laid upon the mutability of rocks and min- 
 erals, which he expressed by likening the equipoise 
 between the various chemical compounds in the 
 earth's crust, and the surrounding physical condi- 
 tions under which they exist, to the delicate poise 
 between the movement of a gas bubble within the 
 liquid inclusion of a quartz crystal and the oscilla- 
 tions of temperature that constantly pass through 
 it, is one of the very few instances in which we 
 recognize his enthusiasm in the place of his more 
 careful judgment. In almost every instance we 
 find him carefully weighing evidence and cau- 
 tiously expressing conclusions. To one of his tem- 
 perament the temptation to use strong expressions 
 and forcible similes must have been constantly pre- 
 senting itself, and we must admire the self control 
 that kept the buoyancy of his spirit in the back- 
 ground of his scientific writings. 
 
 Indeed no better evidence of his appreciation of 
 the necessity of caution in prosecuting the work of 
 unraveling the intricacies of metamorphic rocks 
 could be asked for than his expressions that almost 
 immediately follow the comparison just noted. 
 He says: 
 
 " In working in Archaean geology the only safe 
 method is to free the mind completely from all 
 109 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 traditions and theories to start with the idea that 
 almost nothing is known with certainty, and that 
 everything is to be discovered. The facts must be 
 most critically observed and considered, without 
 too great a tendency to use them at once for the 
 deduction of general principles. Only such con- 
 clusions as cannot be doubted by any one who 
 will take the pains to examine the facts are of real 
 value to the advance of Archaean geology ; and 
 every careful student in the field must realize how 
 slow and difficult such an advance must be. De- 
 tailed analyses of the workings of some well rec- 
 ognized agency, made where the action has been 
 as little as possible disguised and complicated by 
 the action of other agencies, must yield valuable 
 assistance in the penetration of the mysteries which 
 now everywhere surround the pre-fossiliferous for- 
 mations of the earth's crust." 
 
 The historical sketch of work previously done, as 
 already said, is a most valuable contribution in it- 
 self, bringing together and summing up the scat- 
 tered writings of many investigators in a manner 
 to render them accessible to those less conversant 
 with the literature, and foreshadowing, as it did, 
 the preparation of a text book on metamorphism 
 which he was subsequently induced to undertake, 
 and toward the completion of which we had looked 
 eagerly forward. His habits of careful reading and 
 his fortunate ability to grasp the essential parts and 
 retain them rendered him peculiarly fitted to carry 
 no 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 on such a work. It is to be hoped that the material 
 he had already gathered and had systematically ar- 
 ranged may form the basis upon which such a 
 text book may yet be constructed. 
 
 The main portion of the monograph consists of 
 the detailed account of the evidence obtained by 
 study of the rocks in the field, and by their micro- 
 scopical and chemical investigation ; the object of 
 the study being a correct understanding of the orig- 
 inal character of the rocks. This portion of the 
 work shows his methods of close observation, and 
 of constant comparison with the observations of 
 others. And while the purpose of this part is the 
 description of the facts, there are frequent com- 
 ments and discussions as to the bearing of the 
 phenomena upon the hypotheses of the origin of 
 the rocks. The facts recorded are full of interest, 
 and of importance for the solution of the general 
 problem of metamorphism. 
 
 The concluding chapter sums up the evidence 
 and shows that field evidence and microscopical 
 evidence agree in establishing the eruptive char- 
 acter of the original rocks, which were mostly dia- 
 bases, with gabbro, olivine-gabbro, diabase-por- 
 phyry and melaphyre, diorite, diorite-porphyry 
 and tuffs, besides granite, granite-porphyry, and 
 quartz-porphyry. These rocks were metamor- 
 phosed into greenstone schists, in which a foliation 
 or schistose structure tends to make them resemble 
 stratified deposits. The forces that brought about 
 in 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 the metamorphism, so far as it affected the struc- 
 ture, were compression, faulting, and crushing, 
 and, in places, stretching. 
 
 After noting the minerals that constituted the 
 erjjptive rocks in their original, unaltered condition, 
 he describes the effects of dynamic action on each 
 kind of mineral, and the new microstructure pro- 
 duced. Then he considers the chemical metamor- 
 phism they have undergone and the minerals re- 
 sulting from this mode of transformation, and also 
 those produced by simple weathering. 
 
 The paper is profusely illustrated by figures 
 drawn by himself, and by nine plates of colored 
 figures made from those which he had prepared in 
 color. 
 
 That Professor Williams fully appreciated the im- 
 portance of petrographical work as a factor in the 
 increasingly complex methods by which the geo- 
 logical history of the earth is being unraveled, is 
 clearly shown in his address before the Wor- 
 cester Polytechnic Institute, in June, 1888, entitled 
 ' ' Some Modern Aspects of Geology." In it he 
 said : 
 
 "The recent development in the science of the 
 earth consists of the return to the work begun by 
 its earliest pioneers. The old petrographers were 
 right. If we would know the life-history of our 
 planet, we must learn the origin, structural rela- 
 tions, and composition of our rocks. We must 
 discover the forces chemical and physical 
 
 112 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 which work in and upon them, and we must see 
 bow they work. 
 
 " The first and strongest impetus to a renewed 
 study of the rocks themselves was given by the 
 successful application of the microscope to this end ; 
 but this most valuable acquisition has by no means 
 remained alone in the rapid growth of modern 
 petrography. Other appliances, scarcely less use- 
 ful in rock study, followed quickly in its wake. 
 Microchemical analysis, the separating funnel, and, 
 most of all, the furnace, in which has been accom- 
 plished the perfect synthesis of many rocks, have 
 all contributed, along with the microscope, to make 
 the methods of petrography not inferior in delicacy 
 and accuracy to those of any other science." 
 
 Having pointed out some of the services already 
 rendered by microscopical petrography our 
 knowledge of the composition and origin of many 
 rocks he noticed more particularly the evidences 
 it has furnished of the instability of the mineral 
 constituents of rocks under changing conditions 
 of environment, and remarked : 
 
 " It is a question how far the popularly received 
 distinction between dead and living matter can be 
 made amenable to strict definition as long as we 
 know so little of what the so-called ' life force ' is. 
 As far as we can judge of the phenomena pre- 
 sented by the organic and mineral worlds, they 
 differ rather in degree than in kind. This seems 
 *5 113 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 like a bold statement, and I am fully aware that it 
 would be totally unwarranted except for the recent 
 disclosures of the microscope in geology. 
 
 "The chemistry of life is the chemistry of car- 
 bon ; the chemistry of the rocks is the chemistry 
 of silicon. Both are closely allied elements, with 
 the property of forming extremely complex com- 
 pounds, which become more or less unstable with 
 a variation of external conditions. We are accus- 
 tomed to regard unceasing change as a sign of life, 
 and to look upon the rocks as unchanging, and 
 therefore dead. But the microscope shows that 
 this is a false conception. Not only do the compo- 
 nent minerals assume a form as directly inherent 
 in their nature as that of a plant, but if the sur- 
 rounding conditions become unfavorable, they 
 change to other forms, and leave written in the 
 rocks the records of their often complicated his- 
 tories. The only difference seems to be in the 
 relative slowness of the action. I say ' seems to 
 be/ because I am by no means convinced of the 
 absolute identity of the two processes/' 
 
 " There is, however, nothing among the recent 
 disclosures of the microcope in regard to rocks as 
 surprising as their delicate adjustment to their en- 
 vironment. We are accustomed to look upon the 
 masses of our mountains as the very type of what 
 is stationary and eternal ; but in reality they are 
 vast chemical laboratories full of activity and con- 
 114 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 stant change. With every alteration of external 
 conditions or environment, what was a state of 
 stable equilibrium for atoms or molecules ceases 
 to be so. Old unions are ever being broken down 
 and new ones formed. Life in our planet, like life 
 in ourselves, rests fundamentally on chemical ac- 
 tion . The vital fluid circulates unceasingly through 
 the arteries of the oceans and the currents of the 
 air ; it penetrates the rocks through the finest fis- 
 sures and invisible cracks, as the human blood 
 penetrates the tissues between artery and vein, 
 producing, with the help of heat and pressure, like 
 changes in the histology of the globe." 
 
 But with so strong a conviction of the value of 
 microscopical research, he did not lose sight of its 
 proper relation to other methods of geological in- 
 vestigation, for in a subsequent article, in which 
 he discussed the use of the microscope in studying 
 crystalline schists, we find the following very defi- 
 nite statement: "The writer is not aware that 
 the most ardent advocate of the study of petrog- 
 raphy (microscopical or otherwise) considers this 
 branch as more than an aid to geological research. 
 Divorced from field observation it becomes unre- 
 liable and trivial. As a supplement to field-work 
 it is most serviceable." . . . "The microscopical 
 study of isolated hand specimens as mere mineral 
 aggregates once served a useful purpose, but this 
 stage in petrography has now passed." And he 
 considers it "the acknowledged duty of every pet- 
 
 "5 
 
HIS PUBLICATIONS 
 
 rologist to be at the same time a field-geologist, 
 and to study his material in the laboratory in the 
 light of his own observations in the field/' 
 
 These are clearly the utterances of one whose 
 insight into the nature of rocks was both penetrat- 
 ing and profound, whose intellectual horizon was 
 far extended, like that of one viewing the world 
 from an eminence. 
 
 116 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 From Bibliograpbia Hopkinensis 
 
 GEO. HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS. (Associate, 1883-85 ; 
 Associate Professor, 1885-92; Professor of In- 
 organic Geology, 1892 1894.) 
 
 Glaukophangesteine aus Nord-Italien : (Neues Jabrbucb fur 
 
 Min., etc., 1882, ii, p. 202.) 
 Die Eruptivgesteine der Gegend von Tryberg im Schwarzwald. 
 
 Inaugural dissertation: (Ib., Beilage-Bandii, pp. 585-634, 
 
 1883.) 
 The synthesis of minerals and rocks. Review of Fouque et 
 
 Michel-Levy's " Synthese des mineraux et des roches: " 
 
 (Am. Cbem.JL, v, p. 127.) 
 Relations of crystallography to chemistry : (Am. Cbem. Jl., 
 
 v, p. 461.) 
 
 Barite crystals from De Kalb, N. Y.: (Univ. Circ., 29, Marcb, 
 
 1884,^. 61.) 
 Preliminary notice of the gabbros and associated hornblende 
 
 rocks in the vicinity of Baltimore: (Ib., 30, April, 1884, 
 
 P- 19-) 
 Note on the so-called quartz-porphyry of Hollins Station, 
 
 north of Baltimore : (Ib., 32, July, 1884,^. 131.) 
 On the paramorphosis of pyroxene to hornblende in rocks: 
 
 (Am. JL Sci., xxviii, pp. 259-268, October, 1884.) 
 Notice of J. Lehmann's work on the origin of the crystalline 
 
 schists: (Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci., xxxiii, p. 405.) 
 
 117 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Review of J. Lehmann's "Entstehungder altkrystallinen schie- 
 fergesteine " : (Am. Jl. Sci., ocxviii, p. 392, 'November, 
 1884.) 
 
 Dykes of apparently eruptive granite in the neighborhood of 
 Baltimore: (Univ. Circ., 38, March, 1885, p. 65.) 
 
 The microscope in geology: (Science, v, March, 1885.) 
 
 Hornblende aus St. Lawrence Co., N. Y. ; Amphibol-antho- 
 phyllit aus der gegend von Baltimore j Ueber das Vorkom- 
 men des von Cohen als "Hudsonit" bezeichneten Gesteins 
 am Hudson Fluss: (Neues Jahrbuch fur Min., etc., 1885, 
 ii, p. 175.) 
 
 Cause of the apparently perfect cleavage in American sphene : 
 (Am. Jl. Sci., xxix, pp. 486-490, June, 1885.) 
 
 A summary of the progress in mineralogy and petrography in 
 1885 : (Reprinted from the Am. Naturalist for 1885.) 
 
 The peridotites of the "Cortlandt Series" near Peekskill on 
 the Hudson River, N. Y. : (Am. Jl. Sci., xxxi, pp. 26-41, 
 January, 1886.) 
 
 The gabbros and associated hornblende rocks occurring in the 
 neighborhood of Baltimore, Md.: (Bull. U. S. Geol. Sur- 
 vey, No. 28, Washington, 1886, 78 pp. and 4 colored plates.) 
 
 Modern petrography: (Heath's Monographs on Education, No. 
 i) 3SPP-, Boston, 1886.) 
 
 On a remarkable crystal of pyrite from Baltimore Co., Md. : 
 (Univ. Circ.y 53, November, 1886, p. 30.) 
 
 The norites of the " Cortlandt Series" on the Hudson River 
 near Peekskill, N. Y.: (Am. Jl. Sci., 3, xxxiii, pp. 135-144 
 and 191-199, Februarvand March, 1887.) 
 
 On the chemical comf||Apn of the orthoclase in the Cort- 
 landt norite : (Ib., p.2Jf.) 
 
 On the serpentine of Syracuse, N. Y. : (Science, ix, p. 232, 
 March u, 1887.) 
 
 iiS 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 On the serpentine (peridotite) occurring in the Onondaga 
 salt-group at Syracuse, N. Y. : (Am. Jl. Sci., xxxw, pp. 
 1 37-145 > August, 1887.) 
 
 Holocrystalline granite structure in eruptive rocks of tertiary 
 age. (Review of Stelzner's " Beitrage zur Geologic der 
 Argentinischen Republik".) (Ib., xxxiii, p. 315, April, 
 1887.) 
 
 Notes on the minerals occurring in the neighborhood of Bal- 
 timore: (Baltimore) 1887, 18 pp.) 
 
 Note on some remarkable crystals of pyroxene from Orange 
 Co., N. Y. : (Am.Jl. Sci., xxxiv, p. 275, October, 1887.) 
 
 Rutil nach Ilmenit in verandertem Diabas. Pleonast (Hercy- 
 nit) in Norit vom Hudson-Fluss. Perowskit in Serpentin 
 (Peridotit) von Syracuse, N. Y. : (Neues Jahrbuch fur Min., 
 etc., 1887, ii, pp. 236-267.) 
 
 On a new petrographical microscope of American manufac- 
 ture: (Univ. Circ.,62,p. 22, January, 1888; Am.Jl. Set., 
 xxxv, p. 114, February, 1888.) 
 
 On a plan proposed for future work upon the geological map 
 of the Baltimore region: (Univ. Circ., 59, p. 122, August, 
 1887.) 
 
 Progress of the work on the Archaean geology of Maryland : 
 (Ib., No. 65, p. 61, April, 1888.) 
 
 The gabbros and diorites of the "Cortlandt Series" on the 
 Hudson River, near Peekskill, N. Y. : (Am. Jl. Sci., xxxv, 
 pp. 438-448, June, 1888.) 
 
 The contact-metamorphism produced in the adjoining mica- 
 schists and limestones by the massive rocks of the "Cort- 
 landt Series" near Peekskill, N. Y. : (Ib., xxxm, pp. 254- 
 269, plate m, October, 1888.) 
 
 Geology of Fernando de Norhona. Part II. Petrography: 
 (Ib., xxxvii,pp. 178-189, Marc}), 1889.) 
 119 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 On the possibility of hemihedrism in the monoclinic crystal 
 system, with especial reference to the hemihedrism of py- 
 roxene: (Ib., xxxviii, pp. 115-120, August, 1889.) 
 
 Contributions to the mineralogy of Maryland: (Univ. Circ., 
 1S>P- 9 8 > September, 1889.) 
 
 Some modern aspects of geology : (Popular Science Monthly, 
 September, 1889.) 
 
 Note on the eruptive origin of the Syracuse serpentine: 
 (Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., i, p. 533.) 
 
 Geological and petrographical observations in southern and 
 western Norway : (Ib., pp. 551-553.) 
 
 Celestite from Mineral Co., West Virginia : (Am. Jl. Set., 
 xxxix,pp. 183-188, March, 1890.) 
 
 Same, reprinted in German in Zeitscbr. Kryst. u. Min., xviii, 
 p. I, 1890. 
 
 On the hornblende of St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., and its glid- 
 ing planes: (Am.Jl. Set., xxxix,pp. 342-358, May, 1850.) 
 
 The non-feldspathic intrusive rocks of Maryland and the course 
 of their alteration. First paper: The original rocks : (Am. 
 Geologist, July, 1890, vi, .35.) 
 
 Elements of crystallography for students of chemistry, phy- 
 sics and mineralogy : (New York, H. Holt & Co. ; Svo, 
 250 pp., 383 figs, and 2 plates.) 
 
 The greenstone-schist areas of the Menominee and Marquette 
 regions in Michigan : (Bull. U. S. Geol. Survey, No. 62, 
 241 pp., 29 figs, and 1 6 plates, Washington, 1890.) 
 
 The silicified glass-breccia of Vermilion River, Sudbury dis- 
 trict: (Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., ii, p. 138.) 
 
 The petrography and structure of the Piedmont plateau in 
 Maryland: (Ib., pp. 301-318.) 
 
 Anglesite, cerussite and sulphur from the Mountain View lead 
 mine, near Union Bridge, Carroll Co., Md.: (Univ. Circ., 
 87, April, 1891.) [Octavo, reprint.] 
 
 120 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Anatase from the Arvon slate quarries, Buckingham Co., Va. : 
 (Am. Jl. Sci., xlii, p. 431, November, 1891.) 
 
 Notes on the microscopical character of rocks from the Sud- 
 bury mining district, Canada. Appendix I to Dr. R. Bell's 
 paper on the Sudbury mining district: (Rep. Geol. and 
 Nat. Hist. Survey of Canada, 1888-90, F, pp. 55-82.) 
 
 Notes on some eruptive rocks from Alaska. Appendix to 
 Prof. F. H. Reid's paper on the Muir glacier: (Nat. Geog. 
 Mag., iv, pp. 63-74.) 
 
 Geological excursion by University students across the Appa- 
 lachians in May, 1891: (Univ. Circ., 94., December, 1891.) 
 
 A university and its natural environment: Address before the 
 Johns Hopkins, University: (Ib., 96, March, 1892.) 
 
 Crystals of metallic cadmium: (Am. Chem. JL, xiv, p. 274.) 
 
 Geology of Baltimore and vicinity. Parti. Crystalline rocks: 
 (Guide-book for Am. Inst. Min. Engineers, Baltimore, 
 February, 1892, pp. 77-124.) 
 
 Geological map of Baltimore and vicinity: (Published by the 
 Johns Hopkins University, G. H. Williams, Editor, October, 
 1892.) 
 
 The volcanic rocks of South Mountain in Pennsylvania and 
 Maryland: (Am. Jl. Sci., xliv, pp. 482-496, December, 
 1892.) [Reprinted in " Scientific American," January 14, 
 1893, and abstract in Univ. Circ., 103.] 
 
 The microscope and the study of the crystalline schists: 
 
 (Science, January 6, 1893.) 
 A new machine for cutting and grinding thin sections of 
 
 rocks and minerals: (Am. Jl. Sci., xlv, p. 102, February, 
 
 1893, and Univ. Circ., 103.) 
 Maps of the territory included within the State of Maryland, 
 
 especially the vicinity of Baltimore: (Univ. Circ., 103, 
 
 February, 1893.) 
 
 16 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 On the use of the terms poikilitic and micropoikilitic in 
 petrography: (//. of Geol., i, No. 2, p. 176, Feb., 1893.) 
 
 Piedmontite in the acid volcanic rocks of South Mountain, 
 Pennsylvania: (Am. Jl. Sci., xlvi, p. 50, July, 1893.) 
 
 Crystalline rocks from the Andes : (JL of Geology, i, No. 4, 
 ..411,1893). Review. 
 
 Sixty-eight reviews of American geological and petrographi- 
 cal literature, published in the Neues Jahrbuch fi'ir Miner- 
 alogie, Geologic undPalaeontologie, between 1884 and 1890. 
 
 The Williams family, tracing the descendants of Thomas 
 Williams, of Roxbury, Mass. : (N. Eng. Hist, and Gen. 
 Reg., 1880.) [Reprinted for private distribution.] 
 
 On the crystal form of metallic zinc : (Am. Chem. JL, xi, 
 No. 4.) [With W. M. Burton.] 
 
 Geology and mineral resources of Maryland, with geological 
 map: (In the book "Maryland," published by the State 
 Board of Managers for the World's Fair Commission, July, 
 1893.) [With W. B. Clark.] 
 
 Distribution of ancient volcanic rocks along the eastern bor- 
 der of North America: (//. ofGeoL, ii, no. i, 1894, pp. 
 1-51.) 
 
 Mineral and petrographical exhibits at Chicago: (Am. Geolo- 
 gist, xiii, May, 1894, pp. 345-352.) 
 
 Johann David Schoepf and his contributions to North Amer- 
 ican geology : (Butt. Geol. Soc. Am., 5, pp. 591-593, 1893.) 
 
 On the natural occurrence of Lapis lazuli: (Univ. Circ. \ 14, 
 pp. ill, 112, July, 1894.) 
 
 Introduction to "The Granites of Maryland," by Charles R. 
 Keyes : (Fifteenth Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Survey, pp. 657- 
 684. 1895.) 
 
 Washington, Frederick, Patapsco and Gunpowder atlas sheets 
 of the United States: (U. S. Geol. Survey.} [G. H. Will- 
 iams and others.] 
 
 122 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 DR. HEINRICH ROSENBUSCH, 
 
 Professor in Heidelberg University. 
 
 einem 2lfcenb ber groetten Sfyrtlfjalfte 1880 fanb 
 son langerem Slufentfyalte in 3taften fyeim* 
 fetyrenb, auf meinem @cfyreifotif$e eine SSifiten* 
 larte, beren lifcerbrtnger man auf fein bringenbes Srhtn* 
 ben trie (Stunbe nteiner Sftiicltunft (jafce mitt^eilen ntuj[en. 
 leic^ tarauf trat ein tvotjlgejiatter, fc^lanl unb 
 bauter Sungltng mit nta'tdjenfyaft anmut^tgen 
 guten Hefcen 3lugen, in mein 3itnmer unb bat urn Slufnatyme 
 unter bie 3<*fyl meiner (Skitter. 2)a^ ar ber Stnfang metner 
 33e!anntf^aft mit George Jpuntington SBiniam^. 
 
 2)er $reig wacferer unb ftrebfamer 3ttgHnge, in ben er 
 etntrat, beftanb and 2B, 33ron>n t>on 
 Sopolitfi ^araba on ofyo, 3. 2 
 belp^ia, ^)an^ Sloeber on Sidjtenkrg, bet ^Berlin, 
 tab Defcbele on ^>tlbe^^etm, SSictor (Mbfdjmi 
 J^eobor Sbert on GtaffeL Stwa^ frater traten 
 gran! X). 2lbam$ au^ Sanaba, Dr. Sttfreb Dfann au ^)of, 
 Sttfons 5Werian au S3afel, 3. @. Ditter aug SamBribge, 
 93^a(f v gebor J^at^eff au^ @t ^eter^burg, 30$* Slug. 
 5)eterfen au@c^le^n?ig^olftein, ein fa oner $ret$ aufftre- 
 fcenber 2:alente. 9ltc^t einer unter ifynen ber ntc^t bie junge 
 $raft gefpannt ptte nad^ $o$em 3tel* @ie atle $akn i^ren 
 
 123 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 Sftamen efyren&oll eingetragen in bie Slnnaten ber SBijfen* 
 fdjaft, manege mit un&erganglicfyer (Shrift, 
 
 2Ber feoflte e$ bem Setter serbenten, ber fldj gliictfidj 
 t, foldjen (Scfyulern tie SBege fyakn toeifen gu biirfen ! 
 Hcfy flub nttr tie 3<tf)*e ber 2lrfceit in biefem ar* 
 tnonifc^en ^reife, au^ bem ein fritter Xob nun fc^on brei 
 ter tiic^tigften ^innjeggerufen ^at t 2llfon^ SD^etian, eorge 
 SSitliamg imt> Slo^ofitfl ^paraba* 
 
 (Scttt gefeflig fjeiteter S^araltcr, feine frifc^e Sugenb, tie 
 Dffenfyeit unb eypanflijc 2Bdrme feiner ^atur marten eorge 
 Jp SBiUtamS fofort ^eimif^ unb tvo^Igelitten in btefem 
 $reife. (Seine gliicfli^e SBegafwng, Befonber^ bte raf^e 
 unb mitfjelofe 5(uffajTitng bes Se^rfloff^, ba^ erfiaunlidje e- 
 bac^tnif , tvelc^e^ benfelkn tvoljlcjeorbnet Betwa^rte, bte e* 
 wanbt^eit in ber SBermerttyung ber ermorBenen ^enntntfj bei 
 feinen Unterfu^ungen, bie ^lartyeit, mit welder er (Srlern= 
 tea unb (Srforfdjteg barjufletten ermoc^te, fldjerten i^m 
 Beften Srfolg* S'Zac^ rajHog eifriger Se^rjeit Beftanb er tm 
 fe^ften emefter feine ^romotiond ^riifung mit bem erften 
 rabe. )te Sruptbgefteine ber egenb on Slr^erg im 
 (5c^ttjargtaib n?aren ba^ Sfjema feiner Inaugural 
 tation 
 
 3;aft brei 3^re gemeinfamer taglid^er 2lt6eit unb 
 flen perfonli^en $erfefyr$ in 3SerMnbung mit Srinnerungen, 
 bie feine 2llinlid)!eit mit einem mir tfjeuren efd^iebenen 
 , fatten mir (George ^p SBiniam^ litb unb n?ert^ Qt 
 t, faft n?ie einen eigenen @o^n, Wit ftoljejtat Jpoff* 
 nungen fa^ ify ifyn aBreifen in feine Jpeimat^ 2ht$geritfht 
 mit einem rei^en @(^a^ son ^enntniffen unb Srfa^rungen, 
 @rcur(lonen unb 9leifen tuo^lklannt mit ben geolo* 
 efi unterfud^ten unb fetdjtigjien ebieten X)eutfc^Ianb0 
 unb 3talien$, ijorgugtic^ Bemanbert in ber Ctteratur unb 
 
 124 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 roofyl erfafjren in ben 2Sftetf)oben feiner SSMjfenfdjaft, $on ber 
 9tatur nut feltenem Sefyrtalent befdjenft, tel$e3 er in ten 
 Gtofloquien, t)ie ttrir einen 2lfcenb jeber 2Bo$e afcfyielten, 
 burdj $ortrag unb >i3cujfion geiibt fjatte, trat er feine 
 Sauffcafyn an* 
 
 >a$ offene (SmpfefylungSfcfyreifcen, toeldjes i^m tie -ftatur 
 in feiner gangen (Srfc^einung mitgege^en ^atte, Bewd^rte fldj 
 au^ in feiner ^eimat^ 3<*me3 2) 2)ana mad^te ben jung* 
 en Sorfc^er fogleic^ gu feinem ^Zitarbeiter bei ben Unter* 
 fitd)ungen itBer bie Sortlanbt Series, unb eine ber erflen 
 ^poc^f^ulen feines 35aterlanbe^, bie 3o^n^ ^poplin^ Untoer* 
 fltp in Baltimore, legte ben mineralogifdj*geoiogifdjen Un* 
 terric^t ijertrauen^ijott in feine anbe, 
 
 ft$ nt(^t in i^m geirrt* 3n bent garten 
 eine feltene 5lrbeit^!raft 2)ur(^ eine rafdje 
 golge ijorjitgU^er Driginalnnterfud^ungen ft^mang er fldj gn 
 unbeftrittener ^etrogra^ifd^er Slutoritat in feiner Jpeimat^ 
 auf, nnb bie 3<4I ^ er 3iinger, bie er fitr feine SCiffenfc^aft 
 fcegeifterte unb finite, muc^^ i?on 3ftfy* gu 3<i^* ^^ n?ar 
 fiir mic^ ein %t fttag jebesmal, menn ein S3rief in feiner flaren 
 eteganten ^panbfc^rtft anfam, fcericfytenb itber feine Unter* 
 fuc^ungen, soft warmer S^^ube itber feine Sfyatigfeit aU 
 Se^rer* 3 rit^renber )anffcar!eit unb Siebe gebac^te er 
 ber gemeinfam burdjlefcten 3a^re, Heg bent friifjeren Se^rer 
 auc^ ferner Styeilfyafcen an feiner Arbeit, aU fa'$e er noc^ 
 mit i^m im riebrid)gfcau gu Jpeibetberg, unb nafym auc^ 
 gelegentli^ ben SBiberfpru^ of)ne Unmut^ unb SSerftim* 
 mung auf* Unb n>ie er gen?o^nt tvar, wa^renb feineg 5luf* 
 ent^alted fyier on ben rcurjionen fiir bie ammlung be^ 
 3nftitute^ ^anbjtutfe mitgufcringen, t>erga er i^rer auc^ 
 nfdjt in Baltimore* 3tuc^ bafiir fei ifym gebanlt ! 
 2)ann lam bie tit mo er jtcfy ben eignen ^perb griinbete 
 
 125 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 unb Setter nwrbe. @r war auf be3 Sebens ipfeln ange* 
 langt 2lu3 feinen SBriefen wefyte e3 mid) an wie eine 2tt* 
 mogpljare i?on liicf unb eben$freube, unb burd) bie Ueber* 
 fenbung ber ^fyotograpfyieen feiner Sieben mad)te er mid) 
 ijeimifd) in feinem >aitfe. Ob cr mo^l fii^lte, nrie gliicftt^ 
 biefe treue g^^unbf^aft feinen alten Se^rer ma^te ! 
 
 3n ben ^erbftmonaten 1888 fotlte e$ mtr ijergonnt fein 
 @fanbinaien fernten ju lernen, 2B (S, 23r6gger, Jp, 
 JHeufc^ unb 2l ( Jornebo^n woHten mir bie freunblidjen 
 Ce^rer unb gii^rer fctn, 3$ bac^tc e^ mir fc^on, in biefem 
 Sanbe unb unter folcfyen Su^rcrn in efetlfc^aft waclerer 
 djiifer gu lernen unb bie $robe auf manc^e^ (Jrem)jel gu 
 macfyen, beffen Sofung ic^ glaubte gefunben gu ^aben* @o 
 fc^rieb id) an eorge $. SKtdiamd unb anbere, ob fie mic^ 
 begleiten molten* Sr unb ^penr^ (ari?ifl ei^ famen, 
 biefer mit bem ^eim gu einer ^ranl^eit, bie ttjn in Snglanb 
 |inraffte e$e ify i^n ieberfa, 
 
 Unb nun !am eine 3flei^e glucflit^er Sage, bie nrir jufam* 
 men am (fyrtftiantafjorb, bei ^ragero unb in angefunb 
 ijerlebten* 33rogger'^ unermiibUc^er giifyreifer unb unfere 
 unerfa'ttti^e Sern* unb ammetbegiebe puften bie @(^a^e 
 ber Srfa^rungen unb 33eobac^tungen ju faft erbriicfenber 
 5uHe Unb wie nwrben biefe an Arbeit unb enujj fo 
 reic^en Xage ijerfc^ont burdj eorge SGiltiam^' freunbltc^e 
 33egleiterinnen, feine liebensroiirbige grau unb @(^mefter ! 
 2Bie mitrgtenbie t^euren ^Danten, tt>enn fie un^gelegentli^im 
 S3oote auf ber (Srcurfion begleiteten, in ber fyerrlidjen Sanb* 
 fc^aft bad feibftbereitete Siftafyi burd^ ben Sleig i^rer Unter- 
 ^altung unb i^re forgtit^e (Mte, 2Bie ^eimifc^ unb freunb* 
 Hdj war burdj i^re gef^madti?oHe Slnorbung, wenn wir 
 3lbenb^ ^eimfe^rten, ba etma^ niic^terne peifejimmer in 
 Bran 3ofynfon'3 Heinem Jpotet in Sangefunb geworben, Sin 
 
 126 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 l, gu fdjon urn lange gu bauern ! Die Damen 
 un3, urn iiber (fyriftiania gu @cfyiff nadj 23ergen gu fasten/ 
 tt>ol)in nrir burdj Xelemarfen unb ben arbanger Sjorb ben 
 2Beg naljmen, in efellftfyaft on 5lnbrett) (L Sanjfon, ber 
 j!c^ in ^ragero gu un^ gefettte* 
 
 3n ^Bergen lief fitr eorge SBiKiamd bie freie Qtit aK 
 3^ fufyr nac^ S^orben ; i^n tritg ba^ @t^iff nac^ Snglanb 
 unb guritdf in bie ^peimat^ 3$ follte i^n ni^t tuieberfe^n. 
 <5edj 3a^re fpater murbe er abfcerufen, mitten au^ ber ol* 
 len Srntearfceit aU Sorter unb efyrer. (Seine 2e^en^* 
 curi?e fottte unfymmetrifd) bleiben ; fie ^at nut einen auf* 
 ftetgenben 2trc, 
 
 Sin feiten glMidjes Seben ar bag feine* 3Cag 5^atur 
 unb 9ftenfd)enlo03 einem terbtid^en fd^en!en fann, war in 
 Suite it&er i^n ausgegojfen, ober er Htte e^ jtdj ermorben : 
 Iraftige efunb^eit, 2Bol)lgeftalt, ^eiterer @inn, unermitb* 
 li(^e 2lrfceit$freube, SBo^lj^anb, reit^e 33egabung, f^m^a- 
 tytftyed ^^f^r e^reni?olle @tellung in ber efellfc^aft, bie 
 5^eigung 5lller bie ifyn lannten, bie gartlit^e Siefce uon Sltern 
 unb (Sd^wefter, ber 23efi einer innigft geliebten $r&u f eineg 
 ^offnung^ijollen ^inbe^ 5lu(^ bas le^te, n?a^ ein gittiged 
 dkfd)t(f gekn fann, ijl fein gemorben : er ^at ben SSerlujl 
 feine^ biefer iiter erleBen mujfen* @ein S'lame iiberbau* 
 ert t$tt* 
 
 SKir fagen ein @tern fei untergegangen, n?enn er in an* 
 bern 2a'ngen leuc^tet, 
 
 im 3uni 1895. 
 
 127 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 TRANSLATION. 
 
 ONE evening in the latter half of April, 1880, on 
 my return from a prolonged stay in Italy, I found 
 on my writing-table a visiting card, left by one 
 who, I was told, had compelled them by his press- 
 ing inquiries to inform him of the hour of my re- 
 turn. Immediately afterwards a well-formed young 
 man entered my room, slender and graceful in 
 build, with features pleasing as a maiden's, and 
 good, endearing eyes, and asked to be enrolled 
 among the number of my scholars. That was 
 the beginning of my acquaintance with George 
 Huntington Williams. 
 
 The circle of zealous and aspiring young men he 
 entered consisted of W. G. Brown, from Knoxville, 
 Tenn., Toyokitsi Harada, from Tokyo, J. W. Ed- 
 wards, from Philadelphia, Hans Roeder, from Lich- 
 tenberg, near Berlin, Dr. Konrad Oebbeke, from 
 Hildesheim, Victor Goldschmidt, from Mainz, The- 
 odor Ebert, from Cassel. Somewhat later the num- 
 ber was augmented by Frank D. Adams, from 
 Canada, Dr. Alfred Osann, from Hof, AlfonsMerian, 
 from Basel, J. S. Diller, from Cambridge, Mass., 
 Fedor Tchihatcheff, from St. Petersburg, Joh. Aug. 
 Petersen, from Schleswig-Holstein a brilliant 
 circle of ardent and talented young men. Not 
 one among them who failed to bend his powers 
 towards a lofty aim. They have all honorably reg- 
 128 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 istered their names in the annals of Science, many 
 of them in imperishable characters. 
 
 Who would blame the teacher who counts him- 
 self happy in having been permitted to point out 
 the way to such scholars? Ineffaceable is the re- 
 membrance of the years of work in this harmoni- 
 ous circle, out of which an early death summoned 
 away three of the most capable Alfons Merian, 
 George Williams, and Toyokitsi Harada. 
 
 His affable and cheerful character, his vivacious 
 youth, the openness and expansive warmth of his 
 nature, placed G. H. Williams at once on an intimate 
 footing in this circle and made him a favorite. His 
 happy endowments, especially his quick compre- 
 hension of the material of instruction, mastering 
 it as though without effort, the astonishing mem- 
 ory which retained that material in orderly arrange- 
 ment, the skill in utilizing his acquired knowledge 
 for his investigations, the clearness with which he 
 was able to present what he had learned and what 
 he had investigated these all guaranteed him the 
 best success. After having absolved his academi- 
 cal course with unabated ardor, he passed the ex- 
 aminations for the degree of Ph. D. during his sixth 
 semester, receiving the highest grade. The Erup- 
 tive Rocks in the region around Tryberg in the 
 Black Forest formed the theme of his doctor's 
 thesis. 
 
 Nearly three years of mutual daily work and of 
 intimate personal association, joined with reminis- 
 X 7 129 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 cences awakened by his resemblance to a departed 
 loved one, had made George H. Williams dear 
 and precious to me, almost like an own son. 
 With proudest hopes I saw him depart for his 
 home. Equipped with a rich treasure of know- 
 ledge and practical experience, made familiar by his 
 excursions and journeys with the best-known and 
 most important regions of Germany and Italy, 
 thoroughly versed in the literature of his subject 
 and well experienced in its methods, endowed by 
 nature with rare talent for teaching, which he had 
 exercised by exposition and discussion in the col- 
 loquies held by us one evening in each week 
 thus he entered upon his career. 
 
 The open letter of recommendation with which 
 nature had furnished him in his whole appearance 
 proved its efficiency in his own home also. James D. 
 Dana made the young investigator at once his co- 
 worker in the researches in the Cortlandt Series, 
 and one of the foremost Universities of his native 
 country, the Johns Hopkins University in Balti- 
 more, placed with full confidence the instruction 
 in Geology and Mineralogy in his hands. 
 
 This confidence was not misplaced. In his deli- 
 cate frame dwelt a rare activity. Through a rapid 
 succession of excellent original investigations he 
 rose in his own country to the position of an 
 unquestioned authority in petrography, and the 
 number of disciples whom he inspired for his sci- 
 ence and trained in it grew from year to year. 
 130 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 It was each time a festival for me when a letter in 
 his clear and elegant handwriting arrived, giving 
 an account of his investigations and beaming with 
 pleasure at his own activity as teacher. He re- 
 called with touching thankfulness and love the 
 years passed together, and allowed his former 
 teacher to share still further in his work, as though 
 he were yet sitting with him in the Friedrichsbau 
 at Heidelberg ; and if, at times, contradiction came, 
 he received it also without ill-humor or offense. 
 And just as it had been his custom, while here, 
 to bring home specimens for the Institute from his 
 excursions, so too he did not fail in Baltimore to 
 remember that collection. For this also I thank 
 him. 
 
 Then came the time when he founded a home 
 for himself and became a father. He had gained 
 the heights of life. An atmosphere of happiness 
 and of joy in life seemed to breathe upon me out of 
 his letters, and the arrival of the photographs of 
 his dear ones made me at home in his household. 
 Did he feel, I wonder, how happy this faithful 
 friendship made his old teacher ! 
 
 In the autumn months of 1888 it was to be my 
 privilege to learn to know Scandinavia. W. C. 
 Brogger, H. Reusch, and A. E. Pornebohn were 
 minded to be my kind teachers and guides. In 
 that country and under such guidance, in the soci- 
 ety of zealous scholars, I anticipated with pleasure 
 the opportunity of study and of bringing to the 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 test many a problem whose solution I believed I 
 had found. And so I wrote to George H. Williams 
 and others, asking whether they would like to ac- 
 company me. He and Henry Carvill Lewis came, 
 the latter with a germ of disease which snatched 
 him away in England before I saw him once more. 
 And then came a succession of happiest days, 
 which we passed together at the Christianiafjord, 
 around Kragero, and on the Langesund. Brog- 
 ger's unwearied zeal as guide, and our insatiable 
 desire for learning and collecting, accumulated 
 treasures of experience and observation in almost 
 overwhelming abundance. And how were these 
 days so rich in work and enjoyment made 
 beautiful by George Williams' kind companions, 
 his amiable wife and sister ! And when at times 
 they accompanied us by boat on the excursions, 
 how the dear ladies seasoned our improvised meal 
 amid glorious surroundings by the charm of their 
 conversation and their solicitous kindness ! And 
 when we returned at evening to Frau Johnson's lit- 
 tle hotel at Langesund, with its rather prosaic din- 
 ing-room, how cheerful and homelike had they 
 made it all by their tasteful arrangements! An 
 idyl, too beautiful to continue long. The ladies 
 left us to journey to Christiania and thence by ves- 
 sel to Bergen, toward which place we bent our 
 steps by way of Telemarken and the Hardanger 
 Fjord, with Andrew C. Lawson added to our 
 company, he having joined us at Kragero. 
 132 
 
A TRIBUTE FROM GERMANY 
 
 On reaching Bergen, George Williams' leisure 
 had come to an end. I proceeded to the North ; he 
 returned by vessel to England and thence home- 
 ward. I was not to see him again. Six years 
 later he was called away from the midst of his full 
 harvest labor as investigator and teacher. His 
 life's curve was to remain unsymmetrical ; it has 
 only an ascending arc. 
 
 His was a singularly happy life. What nature 
 and our human lot can bestow upon a mortal, that 
 had been poured out upon him in abundance, or he 
 had won it for himself: sound health, grace of 
 form, a cheerful mind, untiring joyousness in 
 work, outward prosperity, rich endowments, a 
 sympathetic nature, an honorable position in soci- 
 ety, the affection of all who knew him, the tender 
 love of parents and sisters, the possession of a fer- 
 vently loved wife, of a child full of promise. The 
 utmost also that a benevolent fate can give be- 
 came his ; he did not have to experience the loss 
 of any of these choice possessions. His name 
 outlasts him. We say a star has set, when it 
 shines in other longitudes. 
 
 HEIDELBERG, June, 1895. 
 
 133 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 1856-1894 
 
 BY JOHN MASON CLARKE 
 
 [From The American Geologist, Vol. XV, February, 1895.} 
 
 Itaque adolescentes mihi mori sic videntur, ut cum aquae 
 multitudine flammae vis opprimitur. CATO. 
 
 IE student of organic nature, busied with 
 the various forms under which life has 
 manifested itself, frequently meets with 
 phases of individual growth, among the living or 
 in the earth's catacombs, which show that one 
 creature may pass through its developmental 
 changes more rapidly than its fellows, spanning 
 structural chasms, leaping vales and scaling heights 
 which others of its race must plod slowly and tra- 
 verse with weary effort. In intellectual growth is 
 the faithful parallel of such physical acceleration of 
 development which the Greeks idealized in their 
 concept of Athene, full-grown and accoutred at 
 her marvelous birth ; equipped for war, not robed 
 for peace. 
 
 The geniuses of science, " standing on the 
 mountain-top and catching the first rays of the 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 rising sun," pregnant with new views of nature, 
 have realized that the path to success must be hewn 
 out with labor demanding the utmost of their equip- 
 ment. Experience has written nothing more in- 
 delible than that for the loiterer, the dreamer, the 
 man of leisure, there is no niche in science. 
 
 In the death of Professor Williams, who was a 
 man of genius, of intellectual prowess, and an un- 
 remitting laborer, it is difficult to fully apprehend 
 the loss which has fallen to geological science in 
 America. As the aged Cato is made to say, this 
 life has been quenched, not permitted to burn out. 
 At the very threshold of his prime, with all his 
 powers symmetrically ripening, and in the promise 
 of a future glorious to himself and the sciences he 
 loved, he is stopped. The pang is such as rent 
 the heart at the too early departure of Roland D. 
 Irving and H. Carvill Lewis. 
 
 American geology is now called to mourn not 
 simply because one of its workers has fallen by the 
 way, but in that it has lost that rare product among 
 its devotees, a well-rounded man of broad culture, 
 wide interests, and generous instincts, an investi- 
 gator of astuteness and notable success, a teacher 
 of magnetic fervor, a speaker of polished fluency 
 and trenchant aptness. It is a loss we could ill af- 
 ford, for which there seems now no compensation, 
 from which none can reap a benefit, and all suffer 
 only bereavement. The key to the mystery is in 
 the keeping of heaven. 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 Professor Williams died of typhoid fever on the 
 twelfth of July last, at his childhood's home in Utica, 
 N. Y. During the scorching days of early sum- 
 mer, while in the field upon the Piedmont plateau 
 of Maryland, he drank freely of a germ-poisoned 
 well. His system, tired and exhausted by the la- 
 bors of the academic year, gave way to the attack 
 which followed. 
 
 He was born at Utica, January 28, 1856, and 
 was, hence, in his thirty-ninth year. His father, 
 Robert S. Williams, a prominent citizen of that 
 city, a man of substantial and ennobling tastes, 
 surrounded his three children, of whom our la- 
 mented friend was the eldest, with the refining 
 influence of such interests, coupled with sturdy 
 virtues drawn from a long line of Puritan heritage. 
 As the writer knew it fifteen years ago, it was a 
 home whence emanated only inspirations of the 
 good, the beautiful, and the true, where gentler 
 influences reigned and where a mighty and well- 
 selected library cast an irresistible charm. 
 
 No one could have held a livelier appreciation of 
 such early advantages than did Williams himself, 
 and while he accounted the lack of them in another 
 no fault or necessary obstacle to success, he was 
 quick to see that it was not without significance. 
 Circumstances which would have left many another 
 less keenly alive to the need of an active, vigorous 
 employment, were to him a wholesome stimulus 
 toward the best which life could afford. 
 136 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 He was of a fine nervous temperament, which, 
 if it prevented a high degree of physical robustness, 
 nevertheless infused both body and mind with ac- 
 tivity. To many who knew him well it was a 
 source of surprise that he endured so sturdily the 
 often arduous strain of geological field work, and 
 that it ever became to him a means of bodily re- 
 pair and refreshment. Yet it was his mind that 
 was normally and by nature more richly endowed 
 than his body. 
 
 During his early training in the public schools of 
 Utica, terminating with his graduation from the 
 Utica Free Academy, he left traces all along of the 
 first degree of excellence. In the autumn of 1874 
 he entered Amherst College. Here he showed the 
 same proficiency in all lines of academic work, lov- 
 ing and excellent in the languages and their classics, 
 stout in mathematics ; the two essential ingredi- 
 ents of the first half of such a course. The former 
 kindled a flame which was never allowed to die, 
 and to these accomplishments must be due in no 
 small degree his broader and more delightful 
 tastes. 
 
 I am not aware that Mr. Williams had mani- 
 fested any especial aptitude for natural science dur- 
 ing his boyhood ; a respect in which he was like 
 many who have attained eminence as investigators 
 and philosophers in this field of knowledge. The 
 rigors of his preliminary training and earlier col- 
 lege course may have afforded no opportunity for 
 is I37 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 the development of such tastes, and the scientific 
 instinct was dormant until he came into contact, 
 in his junior year, with that devoted teacher, 
 Professor B. K. Emerson. 
 
 I recall his enthusiastic devotion to zoology (a 
 subject which at that time came within the scope 
 of Professor Emerson's work), which seemed for 
 him a door opening into a new world of interest. 
 And when he touched the living rock and had 
 become thoroughly enamoured of geology, his 
 fondness for its zoological side long clung to him. 
 
 Being graduated in 1 878, a portion of the follow- 
 ing year was spent at Amherst in post-graduate 
 work. Petrography was then a virtually new 
 science in this country. Zirkel, of Leipzig, had 
 aroused an interest in the microscopical study of 
 rock-masses by his work for the United States 
 Geological Survey when under the direction of 
 Clarence King (1876), but there were then few 
 American students in Germany imbibing this new 
 knowledge, and as few at home to whom Zirkel's 
 work appealed. In 1879 there were probably not 
 a dozen men here who were making serious ef- 
 forts in this new departure, but of these Professor 
 Emerson, alive to every phase of his science, was 
 one. Mr. Williams' interest was enlisted under 
 these influences, and he was led to seek, the fol- 
 lowing year, the well-springs of such knowledge 
 at Gottingen and Heidelberg. Meanwhile, how- 
 ever, he returned for a brief period, during the 
 
 138 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 spring of 1879, to Utica, and taught various sci- 
 ences in the academy which he had left five years 
 before. Though in this capacity but for two or 
 three months, he infused such a degree of enthusi- 
 asm in his pupils for every subject he touched 
 upon as to render the writer's task as his succes- 
 sor a difficult one. Emerson had graduated at 
 Gottingen during the lifetime of that versatile 
 geologist, von Seebach, and to Gottingen he natur- 
 ally sent his pupil. There Ehrenberg, thirty years 
 before, had turned the microscope upon the rocks, 
 searching for their minutest organisms ; von Wal- 
 tershausen had done his immortal work on vol- 
 canoes, and Klein, now of Berlin and the foremost 
 of physical mineralogists, was then lecturing. 
 
 Here during the winter semester of 1879-80 
 Williams heard these lectures by Klein and those 
 by Hubner in chemistry. The next year he changed 
 to Heidelberg, where was and is Rosenbusch, a 
 name which increasing numbers of Americans de- 
 light to honor, and there was begun a friendship 
 between instructor and pupil which death alone 
 could interrupt. After two years of work, prin- 
 cipally with this inspiring man, he went up for 
 his examination in November, 1882, achieving his 
 degree with honor. 
 
 Upon too many of the young Americans who 
 throng the German universities the glamour of the 
 doctorate exerts a palpably unwholesome influ- 
 ence. The title here passes for more than its face 
 
 139 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 value, and, unhappily, it matters little whence it 
 comes. When a well-directed public sentiment 
 shall have restored to its proper dignity the now 
 disordered and cheapened title, professor, the doc- 
 torate may resume its appropriate subsidiary place. 
 With Williams the attainment of this degree was 
 but the terminating incident of his course, and the 
 title was never unduly paraded. 
 
 Returning to his home directly upon its accom- 
 plishment, he found himself situated as many others 
 have been, with abundant opportunity to find 
 something to do. At this critical period in the life 
 of every young man, when the first serious step 
 in his career has to be taken, Dr. Williams did not 
 find his way laid open for him by outside influ- 
 ences ; the writer recalls his disappointment at the 
 failure of an attempt to connect himself with the 
 work of the Smithsonian Institution. Soon, how- 
 ever (March, 1883), he obtained a fellowship-by- 
 courtesy at the Johns Hopkins University, at Bal- 
 timore. It was not such a position as a young 
 man without supplementary resources could afford 
 to accept, nor was it, of itself, quite to the level 
 of Dr. Williams' hopes. Yet it was to prove the 
 stepping-stone to a most successful career in that 
 institution ; for in 1884 he was advanced to the 
 title of Associate, becoming thereby a member of 
 the academic staff; in 1885 he became Associate 
 Professor, and in 1892, Ordinary Professor of In- 
 organic Geology. 
 
 140 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 When Dr. Williams entered upon his work at 
 this institution there had been no department of 
 geology, and the instruction given had been of the 
 most desultory sort, a little in mineralogy and lith- 
 ology having been attempted in connection with 
 the department of chemistry. Upon him devolved 
 the organization of the department, and the high 
 efficiency which it has now attained is due almost 
 solely to the vigorous prosecution of his concep- 
 tion of what such a department in such a univer- 
 sity should be. He was quick to acknowledge the 
 warm espousal of all his efforts by President Gil- 
 man. The output of his academic \vork as em- 
 bodied in his students has stamped a value upon 
 it which cannot now be estimated, but its success 
 in the eyes of those who were watching from 
 positions of close association is expressed in the 
 memorial minute adopted by the board of trustees 
 and the academic staff of the University, in which 
 they bear testimony to " his alert, inquisitive ob- 
 servation ; the clear judgment and sound reasoning 
 which he brought to the interpretation of what he 
 saw; his excellent power of statement, whether 
 with voice or peji ; his cultivated appreciation of 
 literature; the energy, hopefulness, and enthusi- 
 asm which he carried into his work and imparted 
 to his associates ; his genuine individual interest 
 in his students ; the friendliness and helpfulness of 
 his relations to his colleagues, and his readiness to 
 cooperate in every worthy undertaking. " 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 He who trains students insures his own immor- 
 tality. The young geologists, quick with the in- 
 spiration caught from intercourse with this man, 
 will be his best and perpetual memorial. They 
 are not many, his career was too short ; but 
 through them his elevating ideas and clear purposes 
 for his science will not be lost. 
 
 There is one phase of his career, the best of it, 
 he himself would have said, that in which lay the 
 poetry of his life, which must not be overlooked. 
 This was his total and unreserved devotion to his 
 home. It is the more fitting to mention this here 
 as many of the readers of these pages have shared 
 the hospitality and known the loveliness of that 
 home. It was a spot where every geological 
 worker was welcomed, whose entire resources 
 were at the command of the scientific comer ; and, 
 to the students, the point where they came into 
 closest touch with the personality of the teacher. 
 
 It is not possible in this place to give an ex- 
 tended analysis of Professor Williams' published 
 work ; that may be reserved for another occasion 
 and writer. Here its results and conditions are 
 briefly summarized. 
 
 During a vacation in his University life in Hei- 
 delberg Mr. Williams made a tour of southern and 
 southeastern Europe, bringing back with him. the 
 materials for his first scientific publication, " Glau- 
 kophangesteine aus Norditalien , " which was printed 
 in the Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie in 1882. 
 142 
 
GEORGE HUNT1NGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 This was followed in 1883 by his inaugural dis- 
 sertation, published in the same journal, on the 
 Eruptive Rocks of the Vicinity of Tryberg in the 
 Black Forest, an elaborate investigation which eli- 
 cited the applause of geologists best able to ap- 
 preciate it. 
 
 The work of a geologist is preeminently what 
 his environment makes it ; hence with Dr. Wil- 
 liams' return to America and the commencement 
 of his work at Johns Hopkins University his atten- 
 tion was directed to geological problems presented 
 by the region about him. In 1884 ne began a 
 series of papers pertaining to the petrography of 
 the vicinity of Baltimore, publishing two in that 
 year, and continuing them for nearly ten years. 
 Twenty papers and maps published during this 
 period may be regarded as pertaining to this sub- 
 ject, and the outcome of his geographical location. 
 Many of the briefer of these papers appeared in 
 the University Circulars, a mode of publication in 
 which the author evinced his patriotism for his 
 patron institution, even at the risk of hiding his 
 work from a great part of the interested world. 
 
 But under the auspices of the United States Geo- 
 logical Survey, with which he became connected 
 soon after his appointment at Johns Hopkins, he 
 was enabled to elaborate his results in detail, pub- 
 lishing in 1886 an important bulletin (No. 28) on 
 the Gabbros and Associated Hornblende Rocks oc- 
 curring in the neighborhood of Baltimore. In his 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 Guide to the Crystalline Rocks of Baltimore and 
 vicinity, prepared for the meeting of the American 
 Institute of Mining Engineers in that city in 1892, 
 the geological map of Baltimore and vicinity, pub- 
 lished by the University in 1892, the Baltimore 
 sheet prepared in collaboration with Nelson H. 
 Darton, for the Geologic Atlas of the United States, 
 Professor Williams was enabled to summarize the 
 main results of his labors in that region. Immedi- 
 ately connected with this work was the series of 
 highly important investigations upon the volcanic 
 rocks of the South Mountain, published in 1892 
 and 1893, which demonstrated the existence in 
 that region of eruptives in all respects like those 
 of recent origin. 
 
 Another valuable series of papers embraces those 
 which pertain to the petrography, mineralogy, and 
 crystallography of his native State, New York, the 
 materials for which were largely gathered during 
 the intervals of his academic work. We find four- 
 teen of these extending over a period of six years 
 (1884-1890), among the more important of which 
 are those relating to the petrography and contact- 
 effects in Professor Dana's " Cortlandt Series/' on 
 the lower Hudson ; and four papers on the serpen- 
 tine dyke at Syracuse, discovered by Vanuxem 
 about 1840, but lost sight of for nearly a half- 
 century after. 
 
 The vacation periods of 1884 and 1885 were 
 spent in northern Michigan, and the results of his 
 144 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 work there were expressed in an exhaustive trea- 
 tise on the Greenstone-schist areas of the Menom- 
 inee and Marquette regions, published as Bulletin 
 No. 62 of the United States Geological Survey 
 (1890). Among his other special papers we find 
 one bearing on the geology of the island of Fer- 
 nando de Noronha, two on the rocks of the Sud- 
 bury District, Canada, one on rocks from Alaska, 
 and another on the crystallines of the Andes. 
 
 At the close of the London meeting of the In- 
 ternational Congress of Geologists, in 1888, Pro- 
 fessor Williams joined his instructor, Rosenbusch, 
 in a visit to the crystalline regions of Norway, un- 
 der the guidance of Dr. Hans Reusch, whose in- 
 vestigations upon areal metamorphism have made 
 those regions famous. Though he produced but 
 a single brief paper upon the results of this trip, 
 yet its effects were undoubtedly far-reaching upon 
 his subsequent work. 
 
 In all these papers his writing is characterized 
 by its lucidity and incisiveness, its freedom from 
 contentiousness, and its generous tolerance of ad- 
 verse opinion. There was nothing bellicose in his 
 composition, and he never penned a polemic. 
 
 The value of his services to his science cannot 
 be estimated alone from these technical papers in 
 his special field of activity. He brought himself 
 into contact with the intelligent public in several 
 general expositions of the broader bearings of his 
 interests, such as his two articles on the relation 
 19 145 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 of the microscope to the study of the rocks, pub- 
 lished in Science, and a more extended presen- 
 tation of Some Modern Aspects of Geology, in 
 the Popular Science Monthly. And of wider in- 
 fluence as well as of standard importance is his 
 " Modern Petrography/' published in 1886, as the 
 first of a series of " Monographs on Education/' 
 issued by Heath, of Boston. His "Elements of 
 Crystallography" (1890), written to supply the 
 needs of his own pupils, has become widely 
 adopted in institutions of higher education in 
 America, and is understood to have already passed 
 through several editions. 
 
 His mechanical ingenuity and adeptness were 
 shown in his design for the petrographical micro- 
 scope constructed by the Bausch-Lomb company, 
 and which has long been hatched upon the cover- 
 page of this journal ; and also in the invention of 
 a machine for cutting and grinding thin rock-sec- 
 tions, of which the motive power is electricity. 
 Of this useful contrivance he published a descrip- 
 tion in the American Journal of Science for Feb- 
 ruary, 1893. 
 
 Even to this young man the honors which beau- 
 tify and crown success were beginning to come. 
 He had been made a vice-president of the Geologi- 
 cal Society of America, a corresponding member 
 of the Geological Society of London, and a mem- 
 ber of the Mineralogical Society of France. Under 
 the auspices of the Maryland board of managers of 
 146 
 
GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 the World's Fair Commission he was given charge 
 of the preparation of the State book, and in con- 
 junction with his associate, Professor W. B. Clark, 
 prepared the geological part of that work. Under 
 similar auspices he served as one of the judges of 
 award in the Department of Mines and Mining at 
 the World's Fair, and the last paper but one pub- 
 lished by him was an account of the exhibits in 
 mineralogy and petrography, which appeared in 
 the Geologist for May, 1894. 
 
 Professor Williams' early departure has termi- 
 nated one of those truest lives which Dr. Holmes 
 characterized as like a rose-cut diamond, with 
 many facets answering to the many-planed aspects 
 of the world about it ; its influence elevating, its 
 memory sweet. 
 
IN COMMEMORATION OF 
 GEORGE HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS 
 
 Professor of Inorganic Geology in the Johns Hopkins 
 University. 
 
 [The death of Professor Williams occurred at the home of 
 his father, Mr. Robert S. Williams, in Utica, N. Y., July 
 12, 1894, at the age of 38 years.] 
 
 *At a meeting of the Officers of Government and In- 
 struction in the Johns Hopkins University, and 
 of the advanced students in Geology, held at the 
 beginning of the academic year t October 13, 1894, 
 the following minute was adopted : 
 
 MINUTE 
 
 IE President and Trustees of the Johns 
 Hopkins University, the members of the 
 Academic Staff and the advanced students 
 in the department of Geology, assembled to give 
 expression to their common sorrow at the death 
 of their beloved associate, instructor, and friend, 
 George Huntington Williams, now place on record 
 their appreciation of the eminent service rendered, 
 in his brief career, to the University, and to the 
 wider interests of science, through his work as a 
 148 
 
IN COMMEMORATION OF GEORGE H. WILLIAMS 
 
 teacher and investigator ; and bear testimony to the 
 varied and admirable intellectual gifts, and the 
 charming personal traits, which so commended him 
 to the esteem and affection of those who knew 
 him that they cannot cease to cherish his memory 
 and to mourn his early death. 
 
 Becoming connected with the University in 
 1883, a young and untried man, he displayed 
 such marked powers that he speedily gathered 
 around him a body of attached and enthusiastic 
 pupils, and through his inspiring qualities as a 
 teacher, and the repute acquired by his scientific 
 work, he was able to organize and develop a de- 
 partment of instruction which has been highly in- 
 fluential and useful. The loss sustained by this 
 institution in the removal of an officer and teacher 
 of his high intelligence, his wide acquisitions, and 
 his unique personal force, cannot be measured in 
 words. 
 
 It is a melancholy satisfaction to recall at this 
 time some of the qualities of mind and of char- 
 acter which were so conspicuous in him. His 
 alert, inquisitive observation ; the clear judgment 
 and sound reasoning which he brought to the in- 
 terpretation of what he saw ; his excellent power 
 of statement, whether with voice or pen ; his cul- 
 tivated appreciation of literature ; the energy, 
 hopefulness, and enthusiasm which he carried 
 into his work and imparted to his associates ; his 
 genuine individual interest in his students; the 
 149 
 
IN COMMEMORATION OF GEORGE H. WILLIAMS 
 
 friendliness and helpfulness of his relations to his 
 colleagues and his readiness to cooperate in every 
 worthy undertaking these marks of a pure, re- 
 fined, generous, and highly gifted nature were 
 characteristic of him. The recollection of these 
 delightful traits makes more keen the sense of loss. 
 Yet with reverent gratitude must it be accounted 
 no ordinary privilege to hold the precious memory 
 of his active mind, his joyous nature, and his 
 loving heart. 
 
 DANIEL C. OILMAN, Chairman. 
 
 WILLIAM B. CLARK, Secretary. 
 
 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, October 13, 1894. 
 
 150 
 
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