Hilgard

icd and Biographical Sketches of the Hildreth
Family (1840).

[Autobiographical sketch in New-Eng. Hist, and
Geneal. Reg., Apr. 1849, reprinted in part in Boston
Medic, and Surgic. Jour., Oct. 24, 1849; autobiograph-
ical material in the Address, etc. (1839), mentioned
above, and in his Geneal ... Sketches of the Hildreth
Family; sketch by John Eaton in Memorial Biogs. of
the New-Eng. Hist. Geneal. Soc., vol. V (1894); Philip
Reade, Origin and Geneal. of the Hildreth Family of
Lowell, Mass. (1892); New-Eng. Hist, and Geneal.
Reg., Jan. 1864; Am. four. Sci., Sept. 1863; Mag. of
Western Hist., May 1885; P. G. Thomson, A Bittiog.
of the State of Ohio (1880), pp. 166-70.] A. p. j£.

HILGARD, EUGENE WOLDEMAR (Jan.
5> i833~Jan. 8, 1916), geologist, authority on
soils, son of Theodor Erasmus Hilgard [g.^.]
and Margaretha (Pauli) Hilgard, was born at
Zweibriicken, Rhenish Bavaria. His father was
a lawyer who in 1836, for political reasons, came
to America and settled on a farm at Belleville,
111. Eugene received his early instruction main-
ly at home and from his father. At the age of
sixteen, he was sent to Washington, D. C, on a
visit to his brother, Julius Erasmus Hilgard
[q.v.*]. He subsequently attended lectures in
chemistry at the Homeopathic Medical College
and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, later
becoming lecture assistant at the Medical Col-
lege. In 1849 he went to Germany and entered
the University of Heidelberg, but later changed
to Zurich, and then to the royal mining school
at Freiberg, Saxony, In 1853, he returned to
Heidelberg and graduated, receiving the degree
of Ph.D., summa cum laude. On account of poor
health, he spent the next two years on the coast
of Spain, devoting his time mainly to geological
research. In 1855 he returned to Washington
and became attached as chemist to the Smith-
sonian Institution, but in the same year he was
appointed assistant on the state geological sur-
vey of Mississippi, under the direction of Lewis
Harper (see Merrill, Contributions, post). In
1857, upon the suspension of the survey, he re-
turned to Washington once more, but with its
revival in 1858 he was appointed director and
he devoted the next two years to detailed inves-
tigation of the natural resources of the state.
This work was brought to an end by the outbreak
of the Civil War and his report, Geology and Ag-
riculture of the State of Mississippi, though
printed in 1860 was not actually issued until
1866. During the war he was custodian of the
library and equipment of the University of Mis-
sissippi, and as agent of the Confederate "Nitre
Bureau" undertook to place calcium lights on
the Vicksburg bluffs to illuminate the Federal
fleet in its attempt to pass the city, but the gun-
boats passed before the lights were ready. In
October 1866 he resigned as state geologist to

Hilgard

accept the position of professor of chemistry in
the university, but in 1870 again assumed the di-
rectorship of the state survey, holding it without
extra recompense. He early recognized the facts
that a survey of the state of Mississippi could not
be sustained on the basis of its mineral resources
and that the soil is a geological formation enti-
tled to as much, and at times more, consideration
than the underlying consolidated rocks. Accord-
ingly to the soil together with other of the looser-
lying sedimentary beds, as the sediments of the
Mississippi, he directed his studies. He was one
of the first to recognize the relation of soil-analy-
sis to agriculture. In 1873 he was called to the
University of Michigan as professor of geology
and natural history, but early in 1875 he resigned
to accept the position of professor of agriculture
and director of the Agricultural Experiment
Station in Berkeley, Calif. There he remained
for the rest of his life (barring three visits to
the eastern states, and in 1893 a trip to Europe),
pursuing his study of soils and exerting an im-
portant influence in the application of scientific
knowledge to practical agriculture. In 1879 he
was asked by General Walker to supervise the in-
vestigations relating to cotton culture for the
Tenth Census, and to this task he devoted prac-
tically all of his time until 1883. In 1904 he re-
tired from active service and became professor
emeritus. He died twelve years later, just after
his eighty-third birthday.

Hilgard's Geology of the Mississippi Delta
(1870) has become a classic, and brought him
membership in the National Academy of Sci-
ences. His Soils, Their Formation, Propertiest
Composition, and Relations to Climate and Plant
Growth in the Humid and Arid Regions (1906)
was of like originality and brought him distinc-
tion both at home and abroad. He was of medium
height, slender, and throughout the greater part
of his life of youthful appearance. Alert and
quick in his movements, cheerful and vivacious,
he made friends everywhere, but was not lacking
in fighting qualities when sufficiently aroused.
For a man of foreign birth, his English speech
was remarkably free from accent, and he was
almost equally fluent in French and Spanish,
with a reading knowledge of Greek, Latin, Ital-
ian, Portuguese, and, it is said, Sanskrit. He re-
ceived a gold medal from the Munich Academy,
and a semi-centennial diploma from the Univer-
sity of Heidelberg. In August 1860 he married
Lenora J. Alexandria Bello, daughter of a colo-
nel in the Spanish army, whom he had met on a
visit to Spain shortly after his graduation. She
died in 1893. Two children were born to them,
a son who died quite young, and a daughter.

22