at Harvard.

Still another of Prof. Silliman's pupils was Edward Hitchcock, whose
life was an unusually interesting one. His parents were poor and he
spent his boyhood working on a farm or as a carpenter, gaining such
education as he could by studying at night. Deciding to enter the
ministry, he managed to work his way through Yale theological seminary,
graduating at the age of twenty-seven. It was here that he came under
the influence of Prof. Silliman, and after a laboratory course and much
field work, he was chosen professor of chemistry and natural history at
Amherst College. He held this position for twenty years, and in 1845 was
chosen president of the college, transforming it, before his retirement
nine years later, from a poor and struggling institution into a
well-endowed and firmly established one. He had meanwhile served as
state geologist of Massachusetts, and completed the first survey of an
entire state ever made by authority of a government.

The most important recent contribution to American geology has been the
three volume work issued in 1904-5, under the joint editorship of Thomas
C. Chamberlain and Rollin D. Salisbury. Both are geologists of wide
experience, and their work presents the present status of the science
interestingly and simply.

* * * * *

America has had her full share of daring and successful surgeons, and in
the science of surgery stands to-day second to no nation on earth, but
perhaps the most famous American surgeon who ever lived was Valentine
Mott. Dr. Mott was descended from a long line of Quaker ancestors, and
was born in 1785. His father was a physician, and Dr. Mott began his
medical and surgical studies at the age of nineteen, first in New York
City, and afterwards in the hospitals of London, where he made a
specialty of the study of practical anatomy by the method of dissection.
At that time there was in this country a deep-seated prejudice against
the use of the human body for this purpose, and the experience which Dr.
Mott secured in London, and which stood him in such good stead in after
years, would have been impossible of attainment here. A year was also
spent in Edinburgh, and finally, in 1809, Dr. Mott returned to America
with an exceptional equipment.

His skill won him a wide reputation and he was soon recognized as one of
the first surgeons of the age. His boldness and originality were
exceptional, and his success was no doubt d