Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/274

260 The most pleasant feature of the whole of it, however, to me was the thought that I had succeeded where the English had failed, and on their own ground. The people were nevertheless very pleasant to me, and at my instance have continued the exploration and made some new discoveries.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.



HE name of Prof. Charles H. Hitchcock is closely associated with the progress of New England geology, especially with the discovery of the great terminal glacial moraine, and, in connection with the name of his father, Dr. Edward Hitchcock, with the study of the fossil bird tracks of the Connecticut River Valley.

was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, August 23, 1836, the son of Prof. Edward Hitchcock, the eminent geologist, who was afterward president of Amherst College. The family is of English origin, and was planted in America by two brothers who came over at nearly the same time and made homes for themselves in New Haven, removing later to towns near by. Luke Hitchcock, the ancestor of the subject of this sketch, came in 1695, and finally settled at Wethersfield, Connecticut. His descendants in the direct line lived at Springfield, Granville, Deerfield, and Amherst, Massachusetts. Professor Hitchcock is in the seventh generation from Luke, and is equally removed from Elder John White, his maternal ancestor, who came to Canton, Massachusetts, toward the end of the seventeenth century, and removed thence to the Connecticut Valley. Both lines of ancestry were purely English, and all the progenitors were men of integrity, regarded in their times as worthy to fill offices of trust in church and town. Two of them served in the Revolutionary army.

The father of Professor Hitchcock was one of the most distinguished geologists and educators of his time, and his services, especially as State Geologist of Massachusetts, have already been described in the Popular Science Monthly. His mother was the daughter of Jacob White, a well-to-do farmer of Amherst, who, believing in the education of women, had given her the best opportunities for study available at the time. She could read the Greek Testament and calculate eclipses, and was a gifted artist with pencil and brush. She prepared with her own hands many of the numerous illustrations in her husband's reports, and also diagrams for the