HUNT
HUNT
c/^^iA^ lAhAA^y^
Plainfield, Conn. His first ancestor in America,
William Hunt, settled in Massachusetts in 1635,
and was one of the founders of Concord, Mass.
Peleg Hunt removed to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., dur-
ing his son's early childhood, and upon his death
in 1838 the family re-
turned to Norwich,
where Thomas at-
tended the public
school for a short
time. Being obliged
to go to work, he
found employment
first in a printing of-
fice, then in an apoth-
ecary's shop, and fi-
nally in a bookstore.
It was while in the
apothecary's shop that
he developed his love
for chemistry. He
became a pupil of
Prof. Benjamin S. Silliman, Jr., and subse-
quently assisted the elder Silliman in the Yale
laboratory. In February, 1846, he was ap-
pointed chemist to the geological survey of Ver-
mont. He declined to be assistant at the school
of Agricultural Chemistry, Edinburgli, Scotland,
to accept the position of chemist to the geo-
logical survey of Canada under Sir William
E. Logan and removing to Montreal he filled
the place, 1847-72. He lectured in French on
chemistry at the University of Laval, 1856-63,
and on chemistry and mineralogy at McGill
university, 1862-68. He was a delegate from
the geological survey of Canada to the In-
ternational exposition at Paris in 1855, and was
selected one of the judges of award. During his
stay he was invested with the decoration of the
Legion of Honor, and was later promoted by the
French government to bean officer of that order.
He was again an official delegate to the exjiosi-
tions held in London in 1863 and in Paris in 1867.
Upon his return to the United States he resided
in Boston, Mass., and was professor of geology
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
1873-78, at the same time serving as a member of
tlie geological survey of Pennsyslvania. He was
elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London,
1859 ; a member of the National Academy of Sci-
ence of the United States in 1873 ; a member of
the American Institute of Mining Engineers,
1873, president in 1877, and was vice-president in
1888-89. On May 6, 1845, he was present at the
sixth meeting of the Association of American
Geologists and Naturalists, and was then elected
a member. This body became tiie American
Association for the Advancement of Science, in
September, 1848, when Mr. Hunt read a paper on
" Acid Springs and Gypsum Deposits of the
Onondaga Salt Group." He was elected vice-
president of the association in 1870 and president
in 1871 ; and was one of the original members of
the Royal Society of Canada, and its third presi-
dent. During the year 1876, at the Centennial
exposition in Philadelphia, he was an interna-
tional juror, and during the exposition he first
took definite measures to insure the calling to-
gether of a geological congress of the world, and
caused a resolution pointing to that end to be
passed at the Buff'alo meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. In
1878 the reunion occurred in Paris, France, and
was largely due to his efforts. He attended the
second congress, held at Bologna, Sept. 26, 1881,
where his eminence was so conspicuous that King
Humbert conferred on him the orders of St.
Maiu-itius and of St. Lazarus. He also partici-
pated in the fourth congress, held at London in
1888, and contributed a paper in French on
"Crystalline Schists." Professor Hunt was the
first to attempt a systematic subdivision and geo-
logical classification of the stratiform crystalline
rocks, and made many valuable discoveries as to
the constitution of tliese rocks. He was largely
instrumental in bringing before the public the
necessity of caring for the wantonly wasted for-
ests, and interested himself greatly in the estab-
lishment of Arbor Day in Canada and the United
States. He invented a green ink made from
stannic acid and oxide of chromium, used in
printing the U. S. treasury notes, and from the
use of which the treasury notes became known as
"greenbacks." He also patented, with James
Douglass, in 1869, the use of chloride of iron
in connection with common salt as a solvent
of copric and cuprous oxide, and in 1871 they
patented a method of separating copper from
its chlorodized solution, as insoluble subchloride,
through the action of sulphurous acid, but none
of his discoveries yielded him much revenue.
The honorary degree of A.M. was conferred on
him by Harvard ujiiversity in 1855, and that of
LL.D. by McGill (Canada) in 1862, and by Cam-
bridge (England) in 1881. Professor Hunt was
pre-eminently a chemist, as his lithological re-
searches were not made with the microscoi)e, but
in the chemical laborator}-. He is the author of :
Chemical and Geological Essays (1874); Azoic
Rocks (1878) ; Mineral Physiology and Physiog-
raphy (1886) ; .4 New Basis of Chemistry (1887) ;
Systematic Mineralogy According to a Xatural
System (1891) ; and numerous papers and essaj's.
He died in New York city, Feb. 13, 1893.
HUNT, Timothy At water, naval officer, was born in New Haven, Conn., in 1805. He was educated at Yale, but left before graduating to enter the U.S. navy as midshipman, having re-
