Not content with personal devotion to research, Hyatt always felt it a duty to communicate as far as possible to other students and teachers the knowledge he had gained, which might render them capable not only of doing better educational work, but of themselves entering the ranks of the little army of investigators. This led him to make cruises in a small vessel with a crew of selected students, even as far east as the maritime provinces of Canada, and to the establishment at Annisquam of a summer laboratory for the study of marine life by teachers and students of zoology. This has now been superseded by more extensive and subsidized summer schools, called for by the great increase of interest in such studies, but, for some years, with no official support or collegiate subvention, Annisquam led the way. Similarly, aided by an association of friends of science, largely inspired by himself, Hyatt was instrumental in starting the Teacher's School of Science at the rooms of the Boston Society of Natural History, contributing by supervision, lectures and the preparation of science primers a great part of the elements of its success.
Hyatt was one of the originators and the first President of the American Society of Naturalists, an association of professional workers in zoology and botany which meets annually for exchange of ideas and methods and the promotion of acquaintance and good-will among its members. His labors for the promotion of science and for thorough research were universally appreciated among his fellow-workers, though not of the sort which leads to personal advertisement or miscellaneous popularity. Scientific men everywhere recognized his merit. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston in 1869, In 1875 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Brown University in 1898 gave him the degree of LL.D. and he was a correspondent of many foreign learned societies.
In the line of research Hyatt devoted his attention chiefly to invertebrate animals. Among his early papers was a contribution to the report on an expedition in which Verrill and others joined for the exploration of the Island of Anticosti, which, wrapped in fogs and beaten by tempestuous surges, had been almost untrodden by scientific men. Hyatt reported on certain remarkable fossils of the paleozoic rocks of the island. A memoir on some fresh-water polyzoa, illustrated by exquisite drawings and characterized by thoroughness and finish on its scientific side, attracted much attention. A paper on the evolutionary progress, illustrated by the Tertiary forms of Planorbis at Steinheim, as they occur in successive lake beds at that well-known German locality, pointed to the principles to the elucidation of which a large part of his scientific career was devoted. A memoir on the commercial sponges of North America received high encomiums from foreign naturalists as a model treatise on a particularly difficult subject. A very suggestive
