Viewing page 339 of 500

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[newspaper clipping]]

Professor Holmes is not only an artist whose achievements have scientific value, but his work in other fields of art has received great praise. At the recent salon of the Arche Club he exhibited several watercolors of rare delicacy, one of which, a picture of two little girls dancing in a sun-bright meadow, received special mention. His water-color work, which has been reproduced in the reports of the bureau of ethnology, has drawn the admiration and interest of the scientific world to those publications.

As United States Geologist.

After the survey of the west was finished, Professor Holmes was made geologist to the United States survey, in which capacity he served ten years, his intimate connection with the vast western country then just opening to the scientific world making him an invaluable assistant.

A new interest now began to claim his attention. He was already a geologist of world-wide reputation, with a brilliant future before him, but the new interest became stronger every day, and he soon left the ranks of geologists to become an ardent anthropologist. While in the southwest he had seen many evidences of the ancient civilization of the west, and had had his artistic interest aroused by the aboriginal pottery which was found in profusion in the undisturbed homes of the cliff dwellers. His wish to work in a new field led to his appointment as curator of the department of aboriginal pottery in the United States National museum in 1882, where he worked with enthusiasm eleven years, arranging, cataloguing, sketching and publishing the rich material in his possession.

But Professor Holmes was too valuable a practical field worker to be left quietly in his museum, and he was called in 1889 to the position of chief of all the explorations then being made by the United States bureau of ethnology. Ancient village sites were carefully examined, cliffs were scaled and lost cities unearthed during his administration and invaluable data brought before the scientific world.

Came to Chicago.

The Columbian exposition brought Professor Holmes to Chicago, and as his work of exploration was over he was induced in 1894 to become curator of the department of anthropology at the Field Museum, which position he now holds.

Two years ago he went with Allison V. Armour in his yacht Itune to Mexico and Central America. On this trip he went into Mexico and secured the material for his recent "Archeological Studies Among the Ancient Cities of Mexico"

Head Professor Chamberlain said to-day, when told of the appointment: "I am very sorry that we are going to lose him. He was professor of anthropic geology in my department, and we hoped that he would continue with us. He was a geologist in the early days, and was one of the few men of science who went into the far west. It was a great loss to geology when he became an ethnologist, but he has won laurels in his chosen field. His last book was a beautiful memoir upon 'Stone Relics About Washington,' in which he shows that all the so-called 'paleoliths' or rude stone chippings are merely chippings and rejected pieces from the shops of later stone implement makers. His recent expression of his theories at Toronto puts a new face upon our studies." 

"Dou you think his theories will cause fresh study and inquiry along those lines?"

"No. I consider it the last chapter. His new book, now about to go to press, will be a study of the Trenton gravels, and will add fresh weight to his theory."

Professor Holmes returned from Toronto to-day and was not willing to say much about his new position.

"I will have to stay here a short time," said he, "in order to finish some of the work that I have begun. After the death of Dr. Goode recently the Smithsonian Institution was reorganized under three heads, one of which was anthropology. This includes all departments of the subject, and I will have the collections of the Smithsonian and the National Museum to work upon. These three departments will be under the control of Dr. E. B. Wolcott, the acting head."

[[/newspaper clipping]]