Vou. VITL >. Nos 26,
_ Prick Trey Cents.
NEW HAVEN, CONN., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 1899.
DEATH QF PROFESSOR MARSH.
Caused by Pneumonia After a Few
Days’ Lliness—A Sketch of His
Life and Works.
Othniel Charles Marsh, Yale ’6o,
Professor of Paleontology in Yale Uni-
versity, died of pneumonia at his home
on Prospect street, New Haven, at 10
o'clock Saturday morning, March 18.
While attending to his regular duties in
Peabody Museum on the previous Sat-
urday he was taken with a sudden chill
which seemed to be more severe than
one of the ordinary kind. He called a
carriage and was driven to his home,
where, notwithstanding prompt attend-
ance, pneumonia developed very rapidly
with a fatal result. Scarcely any one
outside of his immediate household and
the attending physician knew of Prof.
Marsh’s serious illness, and the news of
his death came as a great surprise and
shock. He was unconscious at the end,
and died without pain.
The name of Professor O. C. Marsh
has been known on both sides of the
Atlantic for over thirty-five years as
one of the leaders of the world in his
particular line of work. Not only was
he oné of the widest known Americans,
but he was undoubtedly one of the
greatest scientists Yale has yet pro-
duced. Just how great a man he was,
and just what his influence has been
and will be on Science and on scientific
thought, cannot be appreciated because
of the nearness of perspective. Time
alone can give ‘him his exact place and
no one doubts that that place will
be among the highest. The position
he occupied may, in a measure, be
judged inferentially by the honors
he received from the scientific bodies in
different parts of the world. Yale’s debt
to Prof. Marsh is incalculable, for, not
only are the priceless and varied collec-
tions which mark Yale in Europe as
well as in America, his gift, but the
building which ‘houses them came
through him by the gift of his uncle,
George Peabody. The single-hearted
devotion of his life and fortune to
purely intellectual aims and to the ad-
vancement of knowledge has made him
a notable figure even among his fellows,
for the last quarter of a century. His
name, like those of Silliman and Dana,
has added dignity to American science,
and honor to Yale.
Besides contributing directly, by
means of collections, a vast amount of
material, Professor Marsh thas fur-
nished, indirectly, much matter for
scientific thinkers and philosophical
writers by the contributions he has
made towards the problems of evolu-
tion. His publications on scientific
subjects number about 300. In direct
line of scientific work he will, of course,
be known best for his discovery and
description of many types of extinct
vertebrates, especially of dinosaurian
reptiles. Early in his career Charles
Darwin wrote him: “Your work on
these old birds and the many fossils and
animals of North America has offered
the best support to the theory of evolu-
tion that has appeared in the last twenty
years.
Professor Marsh was a born collector
and spent his life and his fortune in the
work. Possessed of a resistless energy
and unbounded perseverance, no dan-
gers of privations were too great to
deter him when pursuing his keen
search for specimens. His first trip to
the West, which was the greatest field
of his labors, was in 1868, when he
went out with the first party over the
newly constructed Union Pacific Rail-
way. The road ended at Ogden, in
Utah, and from there Prof. Marsh pur-
sued. his search aided only by a guide.
He was rewarded by discovering, near
Lake Como, the first bone of a dinosau-
rian which was found in the West, and
which proved to be the clue to the .
enormous finds of the expeditions which
followed. In the Summer of 1870 he
planned and led the first expedition
that was ever organized for the study ©
of the Tertiary and Cretaceous faunas
of that section of the West. The entire
party numbered thirteen men, all Yale
men, including Professor Marsh him-
self. Their names were: James W.
Wadsworth, ’67S.; C. Wyllys Betts,
67; Eli Whitney, ’69; George B. Grin-
nell, ’70; John R. Nicholson, ’70; John
W. Griswold, ’70; Charles McC. Reeve,
70; Alexander H. Ewing, ’69; Henry
B. Sargent, ~71S.; Henry D. Ziegler,
7r s+ Chartes: “Tl. Bailard,’70S.; and
James M. Russell, 70. The party left
Fort McPherson, Neb., and pushed
into the heart of the hostile Inidian
country under the escort of a com-
pany of the Fifth cavalry. It was
on this expedition that some of the
first rich finds known to the Science of
Paleontology were made.
THE MOST IMPORTANT COLLECTION.
Since 1870 Professor Marsh has made
about a dozen exploring trips in the
West and has crossed the Rocky Moun-
trains over a score of times, unearthing
on each trip literally tons of material
for the furtherance of science. The col-
lections now on exhibition in Peabody
Museum are but a fragment of all he
has gathered. Some of the most rare
and valuable specimens lie in the cellar
and the attic of the Museum, awaiting
the completion ‘of the main wing of the
building, which it was -his desire to see
built and holding his treasures at the
time of Yale’s Bi-centennial in igor.
In his letter to the Corporation on Jan.
13, 1898, announcing the gift of the col-
lections to Yale University (published
in the ALUMNI WEEKLY, Jan. 20, 1898),
Prof. Marsh, speaking of the most im-
portant part of his gift, the collection
of vertebrate fossils, said:
“This is the most important and valu-
able of all, as it is very extensive, con-
tains a very large number of type speci-
mens, many of them unique, and is
widely known from the descriptions
already published. In extinct Mam-
mals, Birds, and Reptiles, of North
America, this series stands pre-eminent.
“This collection was pronounced by
Huxley, who examined it with care in
1876, to be surpassed by no other in
the world. Darwin, in 1878, expressed
a strong desire to visit America for the
sole purpose of seeing this collection.
Since then it has been more than dou-
bled in size and value, and still holds
first rank. The bulk of this collection
has been secured in my western explo-
rations, which have extended over a
period of nearly thirty years.”
In the same letter, Prof. Marsh de-
scribed fully, under six separate heads,
all of his main collections, and just
where they were found. Besides the
six main collections named, there were
several others of less value, which in-
clude fossil plants, casts of fossils,
geological specimens, and recent zoo-
logical material.
posited in the Peabody Museum, anid
are covered by the present deed of gift.
These collections represented the out-
lay of more than a quarter of a million
dollars and upwards of thirty years of
toil, during which period he served the
University without a salary.
THE LATE PROF. OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH.
[From a recent photograph.]
These, also are de-’
HIS LIFE.
Othniel Charles Marsh, son of Caleb
Marsh and Mary Peabody, and nephew
of George Peabody, the banker and
philanthropist, was born at Lockport,
N. Y., Oct. 29, 1831. He entered Yale
in 1856 from Andover, where he had
been the valedictorian of his Class, and
after graduation from the Academic
Department in 1860 studied two years
in the Scientific School. Going abroad
in 1862, he studied at the Universities
of Heidelberg and Breslau till 1865, and
on returning to America was appointed
Professor of Paleontology in Yale Uni-
versity in 1866, the first chair of that
kind ever established. He held this
professorship until his death, a space of
33 years. As a student he began ex-
ploring expeditions, and it was the find-
ing of a very important fossil in the
coal regions of Nova Scotia, (EKosaurus
Avccadianus) which turned his attention
from Mineralogy, which he had in-
tended to make his life work, to Paleon-
tology. He began his Western ex-
plorations in 1868 and at the time of
his death had discovered altogether
over 1,000 new fossil vertebrates and
had classified and described about one-
half of that number. He was honored
by scientific societies all over the world
and belonged to all those of note at
home and abroad. Among the posi-
tions he held were these: President of
the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, 1878; Vice-
President of the National Academy
of Sciences 1878 to 1883; Presi-
dent of t he National Academy of
Sciences two terms from 1883 to 1806;
Honorary Curator Vertebrate Paleon-
tology in the National Museum, 1887:
Foreign Member of the Geological
Society of London, 1898; Recipient of
the Bigsby Medal from the Geological
Society of London in 1877 and the
Cuvier Prize from the Institute of
France in 1897, both awards for the
highest scientific research. He was a
member of the Geological Society of
Germany, Royal Irish Academy, Royal
Bavarian Academy of Science and the
Royal Academy of Denmark and Bel-
gium. In 1897 he went to Russia, repre-
senting the United States Geological
Survey at the International Geological
Congress held in St. Petersburg in the
Fall of that year, and before coming
home visited all the important museums
of Europe. His last trip across the
ocean was last Summer, when he read
two papers before the International Con-
gress of Zoology at Cambridge, Eng.,
and two papers at the Bristol meeting
of the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science. The last scienti-
fic meeting he attended was that of the
National Academy of Sciences held at
New Haven last November, and at that
time he read four papers: before the
assemblage.
Besides the degrees he held from
Yale, the University of Heidelberg gave
him the honorary degree of Ph.D. in
1886 and Harvard conferred upon him
the degree of LL.D. in the same year.
Prof. Marsh’s nearest relatives are
a half brother ani and a half sister, Mr.
James P. Marsh of Chicago, and Mrs.
Edward Walker of Batavia, N. Y.
His private Secretary, Mr. Thomas
Attwater Bostwick, who has served him
faithfully and almost continuously since
1872, was in constant attendance on him
in his short illness, and was with him
when he died.
The burial will be from Battell
Chapel at 2:30 Wednesday Pp. m. Inter-
ment will be in Grove Street Cemetery.
