theology under Dr. E. A. Park, of Andover, and the Rev. Dr. Taylor,
of New Haven. Questions of the relations of theology and science
were attracting much attention, and he treated of them in two papers
in the _Bibliotheca Sacra_, one of which was afterward used for the
guidance of theological students in several seminaries. As more
opportunities were offered for scientific work, the ministry was
given up. This was the time when the doctrine of natural selection
came to the front for investigation, and the early history of mankind
was receiving increased attention. Mr. Hitchcock came home from
Europe in 1867 convinced of the truth of some form of evolution, of
a considerable antiquity of man, and of the probability of a plural
origin of the human race. Finding that some of his views on these
subjects were not acceptable to his associates, he ceased to make
them prominent in his class instructions, and devoted his attention
to the more technical details of geology. Since then general opinion
has advanced so far on these subjects that the views he held at that
time seem now really conservative.
In 1868 he was appointed State Geologist for New Hampshire, and
spent ten years in the survey of that State. The results of his
work there were published in three large quarto volumes, with a
folio atlas of maps, profiles, and sections. The rocks described
consist principally of crystalline schists and marine igneous
ejections. The geology of New Hampshire is of peculiar importance,
because the situation of the State is such that a correct knowledge
of its rocks promotes the understanding of many obscure terranes in
the adjacent regions of Maine, Quebec, Vermont, and Massachusetts.
Professor Hitchcock's report of the survey may justly be styled his
chief work. The part best studied relates to the White Mountains
and the Ammonoosuc mining district. Connected with the survey was
the maintenance of a meteorological station throughout the year on
the summit of Mount Washington. Daily statements of the weather
conditions of this station during the winter of 1870-'71 were sent
by telegraph to the principal newspapers, and called out much
interest--before the United States Signal Service began its weather
predictions.
The catalogue of Professor Hitchcock's publications comprises more
than one hundred and fifty titles of papers, reports, and books.
Perhaps the earliest thorough study represented among them was that
of the fossil footmarks. The first of the published papers on this
subject related to the tracks of animals in alluvial clay, and was
published in the American Journal of Science in 1855. For several
years after this he assisted his father in arranging the museum and
compiling tables for the Ichnology. He made a complete catalogue
descriptive of the more than twenty thousand individual impressions
preserved in the Appleton Cabinet, which was printed, with
descriptions of a few new species of footmarks, in the Supplement
to the Ichnology of Massachusetts, edited by him after the death of
his father in 1865. Although circumstances have prevented him from
paying much attention to ichnology in later years, he has prepared
several papers on the subject, the most important of which was one on
the Recent Progress of Ichnology, which was read before the Boston
Society of Natural History about twelve years ago. In it the ichnites
were carefully catalogued anew and classified in the light of our
knowledge of the numerous dinosaurs of the West; and the results
of some studies of the slabs exhumed at Wethersfield, Connecticut,
are well known. The list of the Connecticut footmarks was increased
from one hundred and nineteen in the Ichnology to one hundred and
seventy; and facts were cited to show that the _Grallator_, the
three-toed animal most allied to birds, possessed a caudal appendage
of a reptilian nature. The Trias of New Jersey had been found to
illustrate new features in the _Otozoum_, whose tracks are often
ornithic in aspect. A comparison of the features of the Triassic
skeletons described by Marsh from Connecticut (_Anchisaurus_) shows
that the creatures were rather allied to the _Plesiornis_ than to
the _Anomoepus_ of the Ichnology, because of the great size of
the fore feet. Notes upon footmarks have been gathered also from
illustrations in Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia, Kansas, Nevada, and
Florida.
Professor Hitchcock has studied the Quaternary or glacial deposits
with great success. His first publication upon the terraces and
allied phenomena of Vermont appeared while the old views of a
submergence, with icebergs, prevailed, to account for the phenomena.
A study of the glaciers of Switzerland in 1866 satisfied him of the
truth of Agassiz's theory; and whenever the opportunity came for
re-examination of the surface geology of northern New England, the
facts were found to require a different theoretical explanation. He
caused a thorough examination to be made of the Connecticut River
terranes by Warren Upham in the New Hampshire Survey, and proved
that all the high mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine
had been glaciated by a southeasterly movement. The ice came from
the Laurentian highlands, pushed in a southern direction down the
Champlain-Hudson Valley, with a southeasterly flow over New England
and southwesterly over the Adirondacks; the last two courses having
been subordinate to the first. At present the Laurentian hills are
lower than the New England and New York mountains overridden by the
ice, and probably the same was the case in the Glacial period. The
best explanation of these paths is afforded by the suggestion that a
gigantic ice cap accumulated north of the St. Lawrence, towering into
the clouds so much that its overflow naturally descended over the
White and Adirondack Mountains.
That glaciers should accumulate terminal moraines is axiomatic, but
no geologist before 1868 had ventured to suggest where moraines
might be located in the United States. In that year Professor
Hitchcock delivered a lecture before the Lyceum of Natural History
in New York and the Long Island Historical Society in Brooklyn, in
which he affirmed that the drift deposits from Prospect Park along
the backbone of Long Island for its entire length constituted the
terminal moraine of the great continental ice sheet. This declaration
inaugurated a new era in the study of the age of ice. The geologists
in their several States found the terminal moraines, and the various
phenomena began to be classified according to new laws. The search
for moraines has resulted in a restatement of the incident of the
age of ice; more than a dozen successive terminal moraines have
been mapped between New York and Montana, which suggest to us the
existence of several glacial periods. In compiling a catalogue of
observations of the course of glacial striæ by the United States
Geological Survey, it was found that Professor Hitchcock had recorded
for New England as many as all other geologists had observed for the
whole country.
_Eskers_ are another interesting class of phenomena, and were first
described as _horsebacks_ in Maine, about seventy of them having been
described in the report of 1861 and 1862. It was not till after the
description of the Swedish Ösar that the nature of these lines or
ridges was understood; and now they were found in every prominent
valley in New England, as attendant upon the recession of the ice
sheet. Professor Hitchcock gave the correct name of these ridges in
his Elementary Geology, 1860; while for many years subsequently they
were erroneously called _kames_, even in the geology of New Hampshire.
Professor Hitchcock gave the name of Champlain to the fossiliferous
clays associated with the till of the Atlantic coast. The term has
come into general use as connected with the melting of the ice in the
latter part of the period. Because of the presence of boreal species,
and of analogies with similar deposits in Europe, Professor Hitchcock
has asked the question whether there may not have been a Champlain
glacial epoch posterior to those named farther in the interior of the
country, the Kansan, Iowan, and Illinoisian epochs.
Those who explore the geology of northern New England have to deal
with crystalline rocks of various ages, and the opinions of our best
geologists have not been in agreement respecting them. Professor
Hitchcock was the first to make a geological map of New Hampshire,
and he also demonstrated the anticlinal nature of the Green Mountains
of Vermont. His teachers had inculcated the view that these eminences
belonged to a synclinal disposition, coupling this with theoretical
assertions as to their age and metamorphism. Finding their main
principle to be erroneous, he naturally disparaged their theories,
though more recent studies are eliminating many of the schists from
the Archæan. All the later explorers in the field--Canadians and
members of the Geological Survey--accept a pre-Cambrian anticlinal in
the heart of the Green Mountains.
The distribution of the New Hampshire formations was made out for
the most part before any assistance was derived from the labors
of Dr. G. W. Hawes and other petrographers. Twenty years ago, at
the date of the final publication of the New Hampshire maps, the
doctrine of an igneous origin of the crystalline schist had hardly
been hinted at. What seems elemental to the modern petrographer who
has acquired his technical education since 1890 was unknown then,
and the classification given in the report may not agree with that
now taught. In the midst of the diverse views entertained, Professor
Hitchcock classified the rocks of northern New England according
to this principle: rocks that are identical in petrographical
composition are assumed to have had the same origin, and to be
synchronous. Professor Hitchcock was almost the first of American
geologists to employ the petrographer as a help to the understanding
of the crystallines--as was evident by the very valuable
contributions to knowledge in Part IV of the New Hampshire Report as
prepared by Dr. Hawes.
A vexing question concerning what are now called Cambrian terranes
divided geologists for a quarter of a century after 1857, and had to
be considered in preparing the geology of Vermont in 1861. This was
the Taconic controversy. Trilobites had been discovered in Vermont,
which were misunderstood by most of the American geologists following
Hall, Logan, Dana, and others. In giving the species the technical
name first of _Barrandesi_ and then _Olenellus_, Prof. James Hall
asserted its derivation from the Hudson River group--relying upon
the stratigraphical determinations of Sir W. E. Logan. As soon
as Barrandes's attention was called to these trilobites and the
attendant publication, he wrote his famous letter to Logan in 1860,
declaring that there must be a mistake somewhere. That error was
discovered in time to be eliminated from the Vermont report of the
following year. Professor Hitchcock had charge of the field work
in this Cambrian district, and his views of the arrangement of the
formations are in agreement with those of the latest workers in
the field. He applied the term of _Georgia_ to one division of the
terrane in 1860; and the designation has been generally adopted
since that time. Jules Marcou claimed priority in the suggestion of
the application of the term, but upon the publication of Professor
Hitchcock's statement on the subject the credit of priority was
awarded to him by Director Walcott, of the United States Geological
Survey.
Between 1860 and 1870 Professor Hitchcock was occupied largely as a
mining geologist in the estimation of mineral deposits for mining
companies, with his office in New York. In the prosecution of this
business he traveled in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Maine,
New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Alabama. Subsequently, the study of the
phosphate beds led him to the island of Redonda in the West Indies.
He further visited the phosphate beds of South Carolina and Florida,
the gold fields of eastern Oregon, the Chalcedony Park of Arizona,
the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and the Yosemite and Yellowstone
Parks. Studies made in the Hawaiian Islands and their volcanoes in
1883 and 1886 resulted in the contribution of important observations
respecting those regions. At the present writing Professor Hitchcock
is spending a year of further observations in those islands.
Mr. Hitchcock was appointed, in 1858, lecturer in zoölogy and curator
of the cabinet in Amherst College; an office which he filled for
seven years, retiring after the death of his father. In 1866 he
was elected professor of geology in Lafayette College, where he
gave short courses of instruction to five successive classes. In
1868 he was called to the chair of geology in Dartmouth College,
a position which he still occupies, receiving a year's leave of
absence for 1898-'99 in consideration of thirty years of service. He
taught geology and zoölogy as a provisional professor at Williams
College in 1881, and in the following year in the Virginia College of
Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, Blacksbury. He received the degree
of M. A. in course at Amherst in 1859, the honorary degree of Ph.
D. from Lafayette College in 1870, and that of LL. D. from Amherst
College in 1896.
Professor Hitchcock has been connected with the American Association
for the Advancement of Science since 1856, and a nearly constant
attendant upon its meetings and participant in the proceedings.
He is a member of local scientific societies in Portland, Me.,
Boston, Mass., New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, and also of
the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna. He was one of the most
prominent movers in the inception and early history of the Geological
Society of America, and had much to do with the organization of the
International Congress of Geologists, and with the preparation of
special reports for the several meetings between 1876 and 1890. The
handsome geological map of small scale compiled for the United States
was prepared by him and published in the Transactions of the American
Institute of Mining Engineers (1887), to illustrate the nomenclature
and color scheme of the International Congress.
Professor Hitchcock is best known to many by his geological maps. The
first efforts at mapping the geology of the United States were made
independently by Edward Hitchcock and Jules Marcou in 1883--the work
of Mr. Marcou extending only to the plains. Prof. H. D. Rogers, five
or six years later, prepared a map for Johnston's Physical Atlas.
In 1872 Prof. C. H. Hitchcock and Prof. W. P. Blake compiled a map
for the ninth census of the United States, and for R. W. Raymond's
report upon the mineral resources of the country. The success of his
small scale map led Professor Hitchcock to undertake the preparation
of a map on a scale of twenty-five miles to the inch for the whole
country. For this he consulted every work that had been printed
upon the geology of the United States, and obtained the privilege
of using many unpublished data collected by geologists of States
and Territories in which the work had never been carried to actual
completion. The map prepared by the General Land Office was used
as the basis for the geological coloration, and the work appeared
in 1881, of a size adapted to use in the classroom. Its compiler
has never seen any criticism of its accuracy. The edition prepared
for the Mining Institute embodies all the information acquired for
the large map, with such additional facts as had been learned since
that map was published. Prof. Hitchcock's services were called into
requisition in the compilation of a similar map for the United
States Geological Survey, which was published in its annual report
for 1886, under the editorship of W. J. McGee; in fact, the two maps
were printed from the same plates, but Dr. Hitchcock's contained
certain features not found in the other one--the result of different
interpretations--and was more complete. In the Government edition
a system of coloration devised by Major J. W. Powell, which was
afterward abandoned, was employed.
Professor Hitchcock contributed extensively to the collection of
State geological maps in the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, when
large scale sheets of New England, and a large copy of the Hitchcock
and Blake map of 1872, were exhibited. A medal was awarded for a
sheet of thirteen sections illustrating the stratigraphy of Vermont
and New Hampshire. The beginning of the measurement of sections was
made for the Vermont Geological Report under the direction of Dr.
Edward Hitchcock in 1861. Twelve lines of exploration across the
entire State were determined upon, and specimens were collected to
illustrate all the varieties of rock seen upon each. The specimens
were arranged in the State Museum at Montpelier in geographical
order. A similar plan of collection and arrangement was projected
for the New Hampshire survey, but it was made to extend across the
two States, from Maine to New York. Besides the two State reports,
later publications were issued, descriptive of explorations and
collections for the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York, and the New Hampshire Agricultural Report for
1883. The work did not cease with these publications, for after
the transfer of the collection of sections from the New Hampshire
College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts to Dartmouth College in
1894, additional explorations were made; the number of sections was
increased to eighteen; improved drawings of the profiles, colored
geologically, were prepared for the cases in the new Butterfield
Museum; and the explanation of the details was further facilitated by
the construction of a large relief map on the scale of one mile to
the inch horizontally, twice as much vertically, and having colors
corresponding to those on the profiles between the shelves. About
five thousand specimens have been gathered to illustrate the profiles.
The Dartmouth College Museum is filled with specimens accumulated
by the energy of Professor Hitchcock. They concern geology,
paleontology, petrography, economic botany, and conchology.
FOOTNOTE:
[58] Vol. xlvii, September, 1895.
Editor's Table.
_EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION._
Our attention has been drawn to a lively discussion that has lately
taken place in the St. Paul papers over the utterances, on the
subject of the doctrine of evolution in its relation to education, of
a certain Mr. Smith, who was appointed not long since superintendent
of the public schools of that city. What seems clear is that Mr.
Smith is a very ignorant man, whose views in regard to education are
of an altogether retrograde character. How he came to be appointed to
his present position is a question which is being gravely pondered by
many of the citizens; but probably the explanation is not very far
to seek. The dispensers of patronage in State and municipal affairs
are not always competent to make the best nominations to offices
calling for high qualifications; and sometimes they do not even act
up to their own indifferent lights. The man that has the pull is very
apt to be the man that gets the office, and it is not often that the
strongest pull goes with the highest professional fitness.
However this may be, there Mr. Smith is, and what kind of a man he
is may be judged from his utterances. It is thus that he refers to
Mr. Spencer: "There is an old man in England who for years has spent
all his time and devoted all his energies to the attempt to create
a system which shall entirely ignore the name of the Deity. He will
shortly die, and it shall not be remembered that he ever performed
an act or said a word that blessed or comforted or relieved his
suffering fellows." To further darken the picture, he contrasts
Spencer with the late Cardinal Newman, who wrote the hymn "Lead,
kindly light," and who, we are told, if he had done nothing more,
would have been "followed by the blessings and the prayers of those
whom he had comforted and saved." Again, dealing with the modern
scientific view that, in the development of the human individual
all antecedent stages of human development are, in a manner, passed
through, he says: "Let us discard the primitive-man theory. You do
not believe it. Rather shall we not hold with Emerson that every
child born into the world is a new Messiah given into the arms of
fallen humanity to lead them back to paradise?"
It is no part of our purpose to defend Mr. Spencer against the
attacks of so negligible an assailant as Mr. Smith, of Minnesota.
The words that Mr. Spencer has spoken for truth, for justice,
for humanity, for peace, are his sufficient commendation and
vindication--were vindication needed--in the eyes of all who have any
competent knowledge of contemporary thought. If these words do not
help to make the world better we should feel little inclined to put
our trust in the most skillfully constructed sacred lyric. Men do not
always know their benefactors; and it is altogether possible, nay
probable, that thousands who perhaps never heard Mr. Spencer's name
have benefited through the greater consideration with which they have
been treated by others, owing to his teaching. It is quite possible
for men, yes, and women too, to sing "Lead, kindly light" with great
unction, and yet to be the ardent abettors of warlike sentiments and
warlike acts--to revel in a ruthless and immoral jingoism. Dryden
was not referring to the adherents of any evolutionist philosophy
when he wrote:
"In lusts we wallow, and with pride we swell,
And injuries with injuries repel;
Prompt to revenge, not daring to forgive,
Our lives unteach the doctrine we believe."
"Not daring to forgive" is good, and nearly as true in the nineteenth
century as it was in the seventeenth. The one English statesman
who dared to forgive a defeat inflicted on English arms and to
acknowledge an error, incurred by that single act a deeper hatred and
contempt than he earned by anything else, or all else, in his long
and storm-tossed career. We refer to the action taken by Gladstone
after the battle of Majuba Hill. And we are much mistaken if the
majority of those who execrated him most deeply for not crushing the
Boers under England's overwhelming force were not immense admirers of
the cardinal's hymn. What is certain is that they were not immense
admirers of Spencer, and that Spencer did not immensely admire them.
Superintendent Smith has quoted Emerson, but he does not occupy the
standpoint that enables him to see Emerson in true perspective,
or to feel what his philosophy lacks when confronted with the
newer knowledge of the century. Mr. J. J. Chapman, in his recent
memorable book of essays, gives us a better view. "A critic in the
modern sense," Mr. Chapman says, "he (Emerson) was not. He lived
too early and at too great a distance from the forum of European
thought to absorb the ideas of evolution, and give place to them
in his philosophy.... We miss in Emerson the underlying conception
of growth, of development, so characteristic of the thought of our
own day, and which, for instance, is found everywhere latent in
Browning's poetry.... He is probably the last great writer to look at
life from a stationary standpoint."