Mineral Industries and Geology of Certain Areas - Vermont Agency ...

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REPORT OF THE VERMONT STATE GEOLOGIST.
REPORT OF THE VERMONT STATE GEOLOGIST.
IT
had been preparing since childhood for just this task and his
whole soul went into it. He at once planned an extensive work
and wrote out the title pages and contents of the three volumes
of which it was to consist. Each volume was to be entitled
"Natural History of Vermont," the first was to be given to
geology, the second to botany, the third to zoology.
The work never went far beyond the plan indicated, for the
shadow of death, which for years had hovered over his life, at
last fell and in 1856 he died at his home in Burlington.
It was a sore disappointment to Professor Thompson that he
could not finish his work and at first, when it was apparent that
he must leave it unfinished, he was sore distressed. The pathetic
struggle was not long, however, and soon he patiently and
quietly submitted to the will of the God in whom he had
believed and trusted, and his end was peace.
As has been indicated, Professor Thompson was hindered and
often baffled, at least for the time, by lack of funds. There were
other hindrances and discouragements. In an address before
the Boston Society of Natural History, given in 1851, he says
that what he had accomplished in the business of natural history
he had done without iny associates engaged in similar
pursuits, without collections and almost without books.
Personally, Professor Thompson was tall, angular, of a very
quiet and sober, though gentle manner, amiable, sweet tempered,
loved by all who knew him. His opinions were respected
as those of a man of sound common sense and good
judgment. He was unaffected and childlike and though
naturally conservative, his scientific training made him hospitable
to all new truth. His sober manner may have been
largely due to the consciousness that was always present during
the latter part of his life that the disease of the heart which
afflicted him for years might at any time end his life. Because
of this he did not trust himself far from home alone. His most
frequent companion during these years was a Mr. Hills, himself
a lover of nature and a most gentle, sweet spirited man, who
engraved nearly all of the illustrations in Professor Thompson's
publications.
In an obituary published soon after Professor Thompson's
death in the Geological Report of his colleague and successor,
Mr. Augustus Young, we find the following: "At the time of
his death Professor Thompson was a professor of natural history
in the University of Vermont, an institution to which he
had been greatly attached since his graduation, and the eminent
self-taught naturalist who had devoted his life in a quiet and
unpretentious way to independent scientific enquiry and the
labors of authorship and the ministry, died in his humble home
near the university with his intellectual armor on, ere his eye
had grown dim or his natural force abated."
In the preparation of his works on natural history Professor
Thompson was brought into friendly relations with many of the
scientists of his time. One of these, Dr. T. M. Brewer, of
Boston, thus speaks of his friend:
"His loss both as a citizen and a public man is one of no
ordinary character. We have known him long and well, and
in speaking of such a loss we know not which most to sympathize
with, the family from vhom has been taken the upright,
devoted, kindhearted head, or that larger family of science who
have lost an honored and most valuable member. Modest and
unassuming, diligent and indefatigable in his scientific pursuits,
attentive to all, whether about him or at a distance, whether
friends or strangers, no man will be more missed, not merely
in his immediate circle of family and friends, but in that larger
sphere of the lovers of natural science, than Zadock Thomp-
son."
It would he quite impossible to understand the later life of
Professor Thompson unless the place filled by his wife be fully
recognized, for he never could have accomplished all that he
did without her efficient aid. Their attachment began when as
children they wandered through the fields in search of anything
strange or attractive and in after years, when as husband and