%. W^n IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 7 ^ // fc .'!'/ ^>° «? &^ " C<^. /. 1.0 I.I IS 1)28 |S0 =^ •^ lilM M M 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 -< 6" — ► } .V . He came on his mother's side from that good old stock whicli gave to Puritan England the gentle mystic Peter Sterry and that uncompromising preacher Thomas Sterrv, who wroture), the (muulkm Nalaralkt, the PhiloHophical Mac/azmc, the Tranmclinnn of th<^ Royal Society, the French Academy of Sciences, the Proece, was acting president in 1871 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Presi- dent in 1877 of our own Institute. He was first president by elec- tion of the Royal Society of (!anada, and held officie at every meet- ing of the International Geological Congress which his health per- mitted him to attend. His influence at these important conferences 4 MI()(1|{AI'HICAI> SKKTCII OK THOMAS STKItUY HUNT. was lit'igliteiietl l)y his perfect familiarity with trie Freiieli hjiiguage, ill which he could converse and lecture, even on the most abstruse themes, with as much ease and elegance of di(!tioii as in his luother toi.'gue. 'I'he list of home and loreign societies which enrolled him on their honor-list would (ill u page. The government of Francu-, in 1855, nuuh; him a ('hevalier of the Legion of Honor, and suhsecpiently conferred on him th' liigher raidv of Ollicer of the same order. King Humbert decorated him with the order (»f St. Mauritius, and St. Lazarus after the (Jeological Congress of Bologna. What he (fonsidered his most important contril»utions to science up to 18H(), he eml)(»die(l in two vohimcs, ('Itiitiicdl and Gco/oi/!c- |)lied the same principles (o niincjralogy in his latest work, S hiatir Afliicr(ih>(/i/, based on a natural classilication publishe- 1891. The only other book bearing Hunt's name was the special report on lUi' Troj) hikcx mtd Azote liocka of Sotitht'Ofih'rn Pniitny/rav.ia, published in 1878 by the Secontl I'ennsylvauia Survey. From this in(!omplete sketch of his tirehvss and many-sided activity, W(> can form some idea of his learning and of his industry. He never kn(!W what it was to be idle, and never wasted his power on irrelevant and desullory work; and thus he became the master of manv s(!ienc(!s. H(! was a good mathematician. Althouiih not himself a profound physicist, he was able to ap{)reciate the more recontliti' results of modeiii |)hysical investigations. He felt so keenly those inellable allini(ies whi(^li bind every energy in nature to one c(!ntral force, and had such a lofty conce|)tion of the interde- jiendence of the laws of the universe and of the harmonious blend- ing therefore of (chemistry with physics, that he considered that a philosophical (;hemist must be a [ihysicist, and that no pliysi(Mst can b(! iully ('(piipped without a knowledge of chemistry. He was not fond of animals, and his dislike of living species be- trayed itself in indifference to natural history and paheontology. I>ut tlowers he loved, almost passionately. He would fondle the leaves of a favoi'ite plant with as much attection as if it were s(Misible of his devotion. To him botany was not merely a study of names, though his memory revelled in its acicurate knowledgi' of the divi- i. w BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OP THOMAS STERRY HUNT. sions and subdivisions of the vegetable kingdom, but an apprecia- tive, almost sympathetic, acquaintance with the habits, the uses, the preferences, the beauties, the very (leforrnities of every tree and plant that grows. As a geologist, Hunt's original work, whether in the field or in the lalioratory, was done among the crystalline rocks. He was ap- pointed, as we have seen, chemist and -nineralogist of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1848 and entered on his duties in 1849, when he was a youth of only twenty-one years of age. He thus received his geological training from its director. Sir William E. Logan, and his text-books were the Azoic rocks to the north of the lakes and the St. Lawrence, and the Paheozoic nx^ks of southeastern Quebec. Sir William was one of the founders of stratigraphical geology. He was not a chemist or an acute mineralogist. Hunt, therefore, even in those early days, supplemented his chief's deficiencies, and brought to bear on the intricate i)rob1ems that had to be unravelled not only his wealth of knowledge but his vivid imagination. How much is due to Logan and how much is due to Hunt, of the brilliant work of the early Canada survey, it would be invidious to try to deter- mine. They worked as partners, each contributing his share to the common stock. FiOgan supi)lied out of his fund of life-long expe- rience that intuitive appreciation of geological stratigraphical se- quence which he posses.sed to such an eminent degree. Hunt cou- tributed out of his store of chemical and mineralogical knowledge, and from his lahoratory investigations, the facts and hypothetical deductions which gave as conclusive probabilities to the life-study of those older barren strata as the evolution of vegetable and animal organism gives to the history of later rocks. In the literary work of the first series of Canada Geological iJeports they were, in a sense, collaborators. Logan was a most painstaking writer. He hammered at his words and sentences, till they expressed his exact meaning, as laboriously as he used his geolog- ical hammer in eliciting from the rocks the facts they had to tell ; but Hunt usually revised all the literary work of the Survey. The purely geological memoirs were Logan's, the mineralogical and the economical were Hunt's. Hut as years wore on and Sir William became infirm, Hunt did more and more field-work, and identified himself more intimately with the geological section of the Survey. The result was that he acquired the experience of a working geolo- gist, and that tact which enabled him afterwards, in the wider range of his observations in this country and in Europe, to recognize rock- 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOXfAS 8TERUY HUNT. resernblances unci clitierences with the keen appreciation which only long work in the field confers. He thus combined in his intellectual stock the practical experience of u field-geologist with a theoretic erudition in geology and allied science, such as lew of his fellow- workers could claim possession of. He was therefore warranted, as the area of his geological view grew, in shifting his ground on <'er- tain subordinate points. The most notable instaii.e of such a change of position was that taken in his address as retiring vice-|»resident, acting for the absent president, before the American As.soclation of Science, in 1871, at Indianapolis, when he subdivided into si.\ groups the primary and crystalline rocks which had previously been «;lassed as Lanrenlian and Hur()nian, and altered the slratigraphical relations of what was known in the Canada Survey as the (.iuebe(! group. Whether the subject was important enough to warrant the vehemence with which he maintained his ground and sustained his arguments is cpiite another (piestion ; l)ut to Hunt truth was truth, and facts, as he saw them, were facts, and the relative proportion and import- ance of the truth and the facts had no weight with him. ('ompro- niise, perhaps, should be as impossible and ignoble to the man of science as to the theologian, Kach follows an infallible guide and may not dally with expediency or weigh unes.sentials against e.s.sen- lials. What is right and true nuist be maintained ; what is wrong and false mu.st be opposed ; and therefore to the thorough-going geol- ogist the exact position of a paheozoic stratum whose displacen)ent in the tjeoloij-ical .series makes not a whit of ditlerence to any man, •r(»man or (iliild, dead or alive, becomes as momentous a matter of dispute as the most vital question in politics or sociology to another class of thinkers. It is well that it should be .so, as long as zeal does not breed acrimitny, or difference of opinion sever friends. Hunt, perha|)s unfortunately, had always so |)rofound a convi(!tion of the ac(Uiracy of his facts and of the infallibility of Jus deductions that he was too unyielding i;i argument; but if posterity reads the facts of nature as he .saw them, and accepts his conclu- sions, his intolerance will be ac(!0UMted only stern adherence to truth. It is not on his work as a stratigniphical geologist that his fame will mainly rest ; but on his achievements in lithology and chemistry, and on the broad generalization which he drew as to geogenic growth. There are essays in his .second series, elaborating his crenitic theory, which rise to a high pitch of eloquence, and which any one of literary tastes, though utterly ignorant of science, will BIOGUAI'HICAL SKETCfl OF THOMAS 8TERRY HUNT. read with rapt enjoyment. In them he discusses the origin of our earth, and describes the p-ime/al globe and its atmosphere, the agencies, chemical and meteorological, through whose operations were built up out of the primal world-matter the primitive rucks which now everywhere cover and conceal it, and the forces, at the same time destru(!tive and constri'ctive, by which these in their turn are being decomposed and rearranged. His description of this won- derful evolution, as it appeared to him, is an epic which only a man of t!ie widest and jirofoinidest scientifK! knowledge, coupled with the i.nagination of a poet and the literary skill of a trained writer, coidd have conceived and expressed. Last year, after contpleting his biystematic Minevdloi/i/, and when so feeble that he could onlv move from his bed to his desk, he commenced a bcKtk entitled The liisfori/ of (in Earth, in which it was his purpose to expand, in a conne(!te(l treatise, liis splendid generalizations on stellar and tel- liuic chemistry, and especially to tra(!e the intluonce of water under heat and pressure, in decomposing the basis-rock of our globe, and in creating out of the primary elements the older crystalline rocks, and again in re-creating from their sterile asi)es, through decay and death, the newer life-supporting and life-euiombing strata which contain, written in generation after generation, the newer hist(»ry of the earth. lint death frustrated this and other literary pro- jects. Chemistry was Hunt's first love ; and he never deserted her. When he studied geology, his impulse was to seek below the visible results of mechanical causes for the all-pervading chemical forces and agencies which, by disassociation and cond)ination, by integra- tion and disintegration of elemental matter throughout all space, are building up other worlds, as they built up ours. His lithologi- cal researches were made not with the microscope, but in the chemi- cal laboratory ; and in his systetn of mineralogy, neither outward resemblarices nor similarity of crystalline structure, nor possession of common elements, but the relation of hardness to condensation and the further relation of these qualities to chemical indifference, constituted the basis for his classification of mineral species. Whether amidst such a multitude of individual species he, in his first arrangement, assigned to each its proper place, may well be doubted, without questioning the substantial correctness of the j>rinciple on which his chemical and natural In'storic^al classification of minerals rests. Yet it is impossible to follow, in his SystematiG Mineralogy, the beautiful progressive series of quotients deduced nrOORAPHICAL SKETCH <»P THOKAfi STERRY HUNT. from the formula V = p^d (v being the co-efficient of cnmhum- tion ; p the chemical equivalent, and d the .specific gravity), as cal- cnlatero(!(ws»'s of intrinsit- condtiusjition, or so-called |>olvfnt'ri- /alion, (roni simpler clicn'ical species, ile knew, vvi'ii every clieiniHt, that the determini'*ion of (Ik- eo-cHieient of eoiidcnsation is a pro!)l(>m of tile highest moment, a prol>lem which had heen ne(>;le(!ted in the helief that it (li '• t, and that the integral weight varies directly as the den- sity :e rejoiced in the conviction that he had reali/t'd and ex- pres,>t;d on{! of f!ie great law- of nature, after which he had heen groping all his lif