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Rh pinned on when he was a small boy. His mother often used to say: "Eb, why do you always have your pockets filled with stones? I have to mend them every week." His birthplace and the adjoining town of Chester were noted for rare minerals. When he came home for a vacation from school or college he generally brought some fellow-student with him. He and his friend would set off for the mineral localities and be gone all day, coming back tired and hungry, but were always ready to go again the next morning.

He was fitted for college under the instruction of the Rev. Moses Halleck, of Plainfield, Mass., a well-known educator of his time, and was graduated from Williams College in due course. Prof. Marcou gives 1820 as the year of his graduation, but the General Catalogue has him in the class of 1818, which seems to be conclusive. As a college student his interest in the sciences was quickened by the instruction of Prof. Amos Eaton and Prof. Chester Dewey, and he subsequently had a large share in introducing the study of these subjects among the young men of the country. After completing his college course Mr. Emmons continued his favorite studies at the Rensselaer School, graduating there with the class of 1826. In the same year he published his Manual of Mineralogy and Geology for the use of the students of that institution. He also studied medicine at the Berkshire Medical School, and established himself as a practicing physician in Chester, Mass.

In 1818, at the age of nineteen, Mr. Emmons married Miss Maria Cone, of Williamstown, and at the age of thirty-seven became a grandfather by the birth of a son to his eldest daughter.

In 1828 Dr. Emmons removed to Williamstown, where he continued to practice medicine, and in the same year was appointed lecturer on chemistry in Williams College. A cabinet of mineralogical and geological specimens which he began to collect here was presented by him to the college after it had received the valuable accretions of twenty years. He resided in Williamstown until 1838, becoming the most eminent practitioner in Berkshire County. In 1830 he was appointed junior professor in the Rensselaer School and held the position till 1839. He was also a lecturer in the Medical School of Castleton in the days of its renown. His chair in Williams College was enlarged in 1833 to a professorship of Natural History, which he held till 1859, when the department was divided, he retaining the mineralogy and geology till his death.

Having been appointed upon the Geological Survey of New