Dartmouth College - Aegis Yearbook (Hanover, NH)

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Eartntuutli, LUHGEQHHX 7 To such an all-round scholar, and yet'one always a specialist, devoting the greater part of' his time to the routine work of instruction, while spreading knowledge in his general field-to which, had circumstances permitted, he would gladly have devoted his whole time-all honor is due. The scholars of the generation now turning to remain- ing years of well-earned rest or renewal, are the first and most generous in their apprecia- tion of what is done, and is to be -done by their successors, enjoying tenfold greater ex- ternal advfantagesg but, after all, it remains to be proved whether the new workers will in all ways surpass their predecessors. The little Harvard faculty of half a century ago, numbering no more than twelve or fifteen men, receiving salaries of 951,500 a year, in- cluded such names as those of Agassiz, Gray, Lowell, Sophocles, Lane, Bowen, Child, and Peabody-names which it would be hard to parallel among their three hundred successors. So too, in the New Dartmouth-in which, indeed, Professor Hitchcock effectively worked for fifteen years-we gladly extend to him the assurance that our gratitude will follow him whirthersoever he may go, and that we shall look to him, in his freedom from academic drudgery, for new and valuable contributions to the literature of science.

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if Ef1iPA2gia,HnI.3i3EXf1Hl1 Charles ffffenry Tlfitcbcock E19 5.-75? l-HRTY-NINE years of service in Dartmouth College-such is the time Q! record of Professor Hitchcoclfs work as Professor of Geology and Min- eralogy. w. I4 fi W . . . . al- M ln the American life of the closing years of the nineteenth century C and the opening years of the twentieth, few fields have been so marked M ' ' 'M by the long periods of service as that of collegiate instruction. A cen- tury or two ago, the minister used to have but one parish for his life- lfllydr time, and terms of forty, fifty, or even sixty years of pastoral service were not uncommon. Now, the average length of a Prostestant pastorate is little more than three years,-not much longer than that of the Methodist itinerate. Doctors and lawyers seldom change their residence in later life, but their work is not institutional, and their revenues are not in the form of salaries. Secondary school teachers and superintendents rarely remain a quarter of a century in one position. But in our colleges and universities it is assumed that there are cumulative 'advantages in continued serviceg so that, against the com- paratively small financial rewards of the professorial life, may be set the grain of long tenure, accompanied by some little time for research or wauthorship. Forty years ago the resources of American musems, collegiate or other, and of university laboratories, were meiagre in the extreme, compared with those of todayg there- fore scientists of Professor -l-litchcoclfs standing had to do the major part of their work without the helps-personal, financial, material, or temporal-so freely proffered at the present time. Thus Professor Charles A. Young built up his international reputation when toiling, single-handed, at Dartmouth as sole instructor in both physics and astron- omy. The little observatory on the hill, with its small telescope, was the basis of spec- troscopic researches that affected science all through the world. Similarly, Professor Hitchcock, for the greater part of his occupancy of his professorship, gave all the in- struction in geology and mineralogy, with no assistant, and was obliged to tal-ze odd intervals for necessary excursions to important fields of study in this country, in the Ha- waiian Islands-always so dear to him, and in Australasia. As state geologist of New I-lampshireg as curator of the museum first housed in Culver Hall and then in Butter- field l-lallg as constructor of the large sectional geological wall-map of New Hampshire and Vermontg as designer of smaller geological maps and charts of the same or other regionsg as teacher and lecturer elsewhereg and as writer of nearly two hundred papers of value in his chosen department of Science, Professor Hitchcock built up a reputation that went far beyond the borders of the state, or the memories of his pupils.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE HALL