VII.
WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS.
William Barton Rogers was born at Philadelphia, on the 7th of December, 1804. His father, Patrick Kerr Rogers, was a native of Newton Stewart, in the north of Ireland; but while a student at Trinity College, Dublin, becoming an object of suspicion on account of his sympathy with the Rebellion of 1798, he emigrated to this country, and finished his education in the University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, where he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine.
Here he married Hannah Blythe, a Scotch lady—who was at the time living with her aunt, Mrs. Ramsay—and settled himself in his profession in a house on Ninth Street, opposite to the University; and in this house William B. Rogers was born. He was the second of four sons—James, William, Henry, and Robert—all of whom became distinguished as men of science.
Patrick Kerr Rogers, finding that his prospects of medical practice in Philadelphia had been lessened in consequence of a protracted absence in Ireland, made necessary by the death of his father, removed to Baltimore; but soon afterward accepted the Professorship of Chemistry and Physics in William and Mary College, Virginia, made vacant by the resignation of the late Robert Hare; and it is a fact worthy of notice that, while he succeeded Dr. Hare at William and Mary College, his eldest son, James, succeeded Dr. Hare at the University of Pennsylvania. At William and Mary College the four brothers Rogers were educated; and on the death of the father, at Ellicott Mills, in 1828, William B. Rogers succeeded to the professorship thus made vacant.
He had already earned a reputation as a teacher by a course of lectures before the Maryland Institute in Baltimore during the previous year, and after his appointment at once entered on his career as a scientific investigator. At this period he published a paper on "Dew," and, in connection with his brother Henry, another paper on the "Voltaic Battery"—both subjects directly connected with his professorship. But his attention was early directed to questions of chemical geology; and he wrote, while at William and Mary College, a series of articles for the "Farmer's Register" on the "Green Sands and Marls of Eastern Virginia," and their value as fertilizers. Next we find the young professor going before the Legislature of Virginia, and, while modestly presenting his own discoveries, making them the occasion for urging upon that body the importance of a systematic geological survey for developing the resources of the State. So great was the scientific reputation that Professor Rogers early acquired by such services, that in 1835 he was called to fill the important Professorship of Natural Philosophy and Geology in the University of Virginia; and during the same year he was appointed State Geologist of Virginia, and began those important investigations which will always associate his name with American geology.
Professor Rogers remained at the head of the Geological Survey of Virginia until it was discontinued, in 1842, and published a series of very valuable annual reports. As was anticipated, the survey led to a large accumulation of material, and to numerous discoveries of great local importance. As this was one of the earliest geological surveys undertaken in the United States, its directors had in great measure to devise the methods and lay out the plans of investigation which have since become general. This is not the place, however, for such details; but there are four or five general results of Professor Rogers's geological work at this period which have exerted a permanent influence on geological science, and which should therefore be briefly noticed. Some of these results were first published in the "American Journal of Science"; others were originally presented to the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, and published in its "Transactions." Professor Rogers took a great interest in the organization of this association in 1840, presided over its meeting in 1845, and again, two years later, when it was expanded into the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In connection with his brother Robert, Professor William B. Rogers was the first to investigate the solvent action of water—especially when charged with carbonic acid—on various minerals and rocks; and by showing the extent of this action in nature, and its influence in the formation of mineral deposits of various kinds, he was one of the first to observe and interpret the important class of facts which are the basis of chemical geology.
Another important result of Professor Rogers's geological work was to show that the condition of any coal-bed stands in a close genetic relation to the amount of disturbance to which the enclosing strata have been submitted, the coal becoming harder and containing less volatile matter as the evidence of disturbance increases. This generalization, which seems to us now almost self-evident—understanding, as we do, more of the history of the formation of coal—was with Professor Rogers an induction from a great mass of observed facts.