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Que VY Orns
ANNUAL REPORT BOARD OF REGEN Is
OF THE
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
SHOWING
THE OPERATIONS, EXPENDITURES, AND CONDITION OF THE INSTITUTION
FOR ‘THE
YEAR ENDING JUNE 320, 1897. t 5 ) 9
eet Out.
ese TO Ny MUSEUM. Part ie
WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
LOO ls
AN ACT PROVIDING FOR THE PUBLIC PRINTING AND BINDING, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS.
Approved January 12, 1895.
“Of the Report of the Smithsonian Institution, ten thousand copies; one thousand copies for the Senate, two thousand for the House, five thousand for distribution by the Smithsonian Institution, and two thousand for distribution by the National Museum.”’
II
A MEMORIAL
OF
GEORGE BROWN GOODE,
TOGETHER WITH
AS SELECTION OF HIS PAPERS
ON
MUSEUMS
AND ON THE
HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA.
WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
LO Ome
oath, -_ammel
~ Oe ee a : iene a ” aes ne =
NRE OLD Ui Ct LON
The influence of Doctor George Brown Goode on the growth and character of the United States National Museum was profound, and it extended to museum development in all parts of the world. It is desirable that an account of his life and services should appear, together with reprints of his valuable papers on American science and public museums, as well as several on related subjects that have never been published, in this portion of the Smithsonian report devoted to the work of the National Museum. Most of these papers appeared originally in publications not easily accessible to students, and all reprints have long since been distributed.
GEORGE BROWN GOODE.
Every student of nature the world over has profited by the work of Doctor Goode. Everyone interested in the advancement of science and in the development of museums as the graphic representatives of history and science has been and will be encouraged and assisted because he lived and worked. Every person can emulate his example of right living and honest service with gain individually and as a member of the community and of the body politic, and every Virginian can point with pride to the fact that Doctor Goode’s ancestors were from that historic State.
Personally I knew him as the man of science, the museum adminis- trator, the patriot, the valued adviser, and the loyal friend. Two years have passed since his death, and I feel the personal and public loss more and more. No one has come to take his place in many of the fields of his activity. Science, and particularly Government scientific institutions, will long miss the wholesome influence that he exerted on the minds of scientific and public men. But all that could be said by me has been spoken by those whose tributes follow. We loved the man, and we cherish his memory in secret thought and honor it in the written words of this memorial volume.
CHARLES D. WALCOTT.
Vv
|. a ee =a -_ i = ——— ‘ 7 7:
+ et a
CONTENTS.
MEMORIAL MEETING.
TERMED ON kes. a Solo GARD OOS EG OO RRO ETA Cen te ne aera JPR WRITING. 4 Saqniathane.so Ge Gb06 bo ApoE oa soos COR as Shoer PPA OE o oe cas oe Introductonystemarkss »By, Gardiner Greene Hubbard® 225.55. -.-5 4+. ssesee Openingszaddress.- By Samuel Piegpont Langley. 2560s aa ace sen soe anes
Goode as a historian and citizen. By William Lyne Wilson ................ Goodeasia naturalist: ‘By Henry airfield @sborm.:. 25. i2255....05.2s08 oe Goode’s activities in relation to American science. By William Healey Dall.
RVESOMIPONS ANG MESSAGES! OL SY TMPAUA Yc a1.rataccisici ta) cis Scisreicis afenisy oleae ala orel olelers, Memoir of George Brown Goode. By Samuel Pierpont Langley ............
PAPERS BY GEORGE BROWN GOODE.
Museum-rustory and Miuseums of History o.2sa-0.-00.+5-2+- + ences ecee see aherGenesis,of the United’ States: National Museum) (oc .-..6 es se dace eee siiteserinciplesion Niuseumm AGdMInMIStratlom <2... vnc asso soe fee le eee tenes Nae IMGrSA HANS Gre NS Iba eagooddesoocAmaGodGos UOGUo Ee GOo ho Cano bocHUOCd se The Origin of the National Scientific and Educational Institutions of the
WiititedeStatesraanrcper ets se ce ters sual tere ated trter scpadear ns Ceagsruelonont Maan al chtehars e aece heyberinnimes of Natural History 1m Americas... 0. sc. ccscscieccs sence less Mes bepiTinEMos OF AGMERICAM! SCIOUCEr («nic aie oisls do tec. e/efelareds sevele wisi siayeiaieis ie cies The First National Scientific Congress (Washington, April, 1844) and its Con-
nection with the Organization of the American Association ...............
The Published Writings of George Brown Goode. By Randolph Iltyd Geare.
VII
rg iS) IQ o
Nukb ow:
| WwW
~I
19. 20.
EIST OF PEATES::
Facing page. FRONTISPIECE. George Brown Goode (1857-1896), assistant secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution. From a photograph by T. W. Smillie........
. John James Abert (1787-1863), chief of U. S. Topographical Engineers.
incomuarsteelWenoravinoaby | .Gs BULEC cece utes cons conte sces duces es
. Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), naturalist. From a steel engraving of a painting. . John James Audubon (1780-1851), naturalist. From a photograph of a
Milosrap ue bya | pl iomeylOoOme owe Nan doce woh estas waaetes she ciaeee
. Don Felix d’Azara (1746-1811), naturalist. From an engraving by Lizars.
Alexander Dallas Bache (1806-1867), superintendent U. S. Coast Survey. LOMAS MOCOSLAD Us Olam ATEN Os. c. eovts) aie c.o or seis « idles © Csletiswas ee vee
. Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823-1887), secretary of the Smithsonian Insti-
LUOn Eso a piotograpl Dy UlheW= Smet vec ..2 ee acme e eite soe ne
. Joel Barlow (1754-1812), author of the Columbiad. From an engraving
Dy ene omuicorota painting by Robert, ultonsysc50. 202s cet cee essa:
. Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard (1809-1889), president of Columbia
College, New York. Froman engraving by E. G. Williams and Brother.
. John Gross Barnard (1815-1882), army engineer. From an engraving by
ey VEG TRTH ICL VTE rs hate RS Fe ee dR Re ae a aI hs
. Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), physician and naturalist. From an
Sera oa Divs GC ODLCCIIL minim Was) ucteieray ocinta nisteyeloyee ore aerate te alate aehare pene acters
. William Bartram (1739-1823), botanist. From an engraving by T. B.
Wielch: ofapatatine DyeC.. Werk Gal Geter ttn te lone «cto tetet te cies: Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1824), mathematician. From an engraving by J. Gross of a drawing by J. B. Longacre of the bust by Frazee ..........
. Mathew Carey (1760-1839), author. From an engraving by Samuel Sar-
Entmeonanpaimemoy JO, NEadle’s 2: io. 0 c.. nee cc seas Seas eases mis ce oer
. Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635), French explorer. From an engraving
by J. A. O’ Neill of a painting by Hamel of the Moncornet portrait...
. Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761), French explorer. From
AMEE OMAN OM yp. JPtAG O) UNG cyersrays,c, sate 6 oie ia ese, efereas sieeve sie sis/seisle aPe = arecee 8
. De Witt Clinton (1769-1828), chief promoter of the Erie Canal, From an
engraving by A. B. Durand of a painting by Ingham...................
. George Hammell Cook (1818-1889), state geologist of New Jersey. From
RPG LG Otol er Poe tenders cnr sieiarerchspa's wicis cin oft ee cee ote Mersin eee scene ote Ae sheen
. Darius Nash Couch (1822-1897), army explorer. From an engraving by
ee CeeBitcrherOr ae PAOLOSTA Pils oe Cac ctcicscte etal Mole ki eys aitomeursrete. ole aieieter” oe: se %e acs Charles Patrick Daly (1816-1899), geographer. From a photograph..... James Dwight Dana (1813-1895), geologist. From an engraving by HEASMRWY Pes SIXELL ED ie eaetets op os P= Ve cal 1 ee teoe net tae Staten ee eiale ielu s Bis vas onesie fs:
110
tThe illustrations that accompany this volume are arranged alphabetically.
IX
List of Plates.
Facing page.
. Charles Henry Davis (1807-1877), naval explorer. From an engraving
by As HL, Ritchie < os) <5) apecye oe =icleieie eine «reins oat pie tale) tiie eee
. Edwin Hamilton Davis (1811-1888), ethnologist. From a copy of a
photograph. 2.6 Go .' njrce'e cree ele cerns cies rinse eich i ee
3. John William Draper (1811-1882), physicist. From an engraving by
George. Perrine. ser nyse cies cps cles cleretel talent ol ehe ore ne =e eee ee
. Peter Stephen Duponceau (1760-1844), philologist. From a lithograph. . . Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), president of Yale College. From an
engraving by Ereemianlss pyre clie) acim ccl-= lores =a te alm lta totale ee
. James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887), civil engineer. From an engraving
Dyer. Nand s al Shue hopes Mean HAocia donn Siep do odnooagaodorsocoGra sé aéodes =
. Amos Eaton (1776-1842), botanist. From an engraving by A. H. Ritchie. . Andrew Ellicott (1758-1820), astronomer and civil engineer. From a
photograph of aypaimting. ee ae se tee © eee eee eee . George William Featherstonhaugh (1780-1866), explorer and geologist. JEnoyeal Gl, OMAMKOWO AEH. Sooo domo boocooCosanbasaoEsOUaLevOe COs OaRIRC . William Ferrell (1817-1891), meteorologist. From a photograph .......
. John Reinhold (1729-1798) and John George (1754-1794) Forster, natu-
TUNES), VerRovanl fahal Grareirahysoaver Jone ID), IBSIRASE ng ocacncspoaoocgooeednooDeéS
. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), scientist. From an etching by Albert
Rosenthalof the painting by:C Wi keales eens pec eear eee ree eee
. John Charles Frémont (1813-1890), army explorer. From an engraving
bye Knichtiof:a photographs: i stx: ct el ile ine ee eer eee
34. George Gibbs (1815-1873), ethnologist. From a photograph............ 35. James Melville Gilliss (1811-1865), astronomer. From a photograph.... 36. Augustus Addison Gould (1805-1866), conchologist. From an engraving
by Wight Smith.) oats om a viet ein cciwiainfs tel ctorece! crave wit sate rey aPC 37. Asa Gray (1810-1888), botanist. From a wood engraving by G. Kruell.. 38. Jacob Green (1790-1841), chemist. From an engraving by J. Sartain of
a painting iby Hs Bridge portinics sands ee care haere eee eee 39. Arnold Guyot (1807-1884), geographer. From a photograph ........... 40. Stephen Hales (1677-1761), botanist. From a steel engraving ..........
. Charles Frederic Hartt (1840-1878), naturalist and explorer. From a
wood cut engraving of a photograph
. Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler (1770-1843), first superintendent of the U.S.
Coast Survey. From a photograph of a painting
. Isaac Israel Hayes (1832-1881), Arctic explorer, From an engraving by
Jackman
. Joseph Henry (1799-1878), first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. .
Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864), geologist. From a photograph of a
painting: oi acs. tee Asa ens. aa ete ees eerie rice ees Iyben Norton Horsford (1818-1893), chemist. From an engraving....... David Hosack (1769-1835), botanist. From an engraving by A. B. Durand
of a painting by Thomas Sully
. Andrew Atkinson Humphreys (1810-1883), army engineer. From an
David Humphreys (1752-1818), poet and diplomatist. From an engraving by G. Parker of a painting by Gilbert/Stuacts..2) 0) see see Elisha Kent Kane (1820-1857), Arctic explorer. From an engraving by T. B. Welch of a daguerreotype portrait by Brady.......-......-.....-
. Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1767-1820), civil engineer. From a lithograph.
Isaac Lea (1792-1886), conchologist. From an etching by S. J. Ferris....
146 150
154 158
162
166 170
174
178 182
186 190 196 200
204
208 212
216 220 224 228
232
236 240
244 248
252 256 260 266
270 274
8I.
82.
List of Plates.
XI
Facing page.
. Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809), explorer. From an engraving by Strick-
IEWENGL chen oto ciate eae ta SUIS OO ee oI os ar ieee
. James Harvey Linsley (1787-1843), naturalist. From a steel engraving. . . Stephen Harriman Long (1784-1864), army explorer. From an engraving
bye). Co Buttreron a. daguerreotype portrait: .c,s.tmn «2s ciel teres ace se
. William Maclure (1763-1840), geologist. From an engraving of a painting
yee OMAS Ul vareyet ieee rss esis « eie2 ms) oia iS a1 os eyeiclare: a1 x ayarcaw-aisisi sissies
. Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873), geographer. From an engraving
loyy. (GrSoyeets 12d Rerctieh ays conan SCA ta Spee OEMS a OC EOrEe Ee oer enc
. Francois André Michaux (1770-1855), botanist. From an engraving by
Hebe rallora painting by Rembrandt Pealeks <--cc. wetece leila ee
. Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel (1809-1862), astronomer. From an engraving
Daya ERO eS UI CER Cre ree Ee veistsccimyereyeet ors Site cn aie cx tatere sua chile RUNNY SES.
. Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831), ‘‘ Nestor of American Science.”
Brom an eneraving of a painting by H. Tnman. 22/520... 0. ce eae
. Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), physician. From an engraving..... . Albert James Myer (1827-1880), chief signal officer, U.S. A. From an
SOLA VED VV TUL am VIEL AY, erste torc sais ate cele te ene fapsterol a alas cee ets =
. John Strong Newberry (1822-1892), geologist. From a photograph...... . Eliphalet Nott (1773-1866), president of Union College. From an engray-
InPuDy eA. Durand: ofa painting by Ames... 20 oh=aosaes es vcs ee
. Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859), naturalist. From an engraving by Thom-
. Denison Olmsted (1791-1859), physicist. From an engraving by A. H.
Rat it amen RAS Tie Ie i Fe eg oa te AN a. ae Rica c tetera feta hors ina alee ed neuen
. John Grubb Parke (1827-1900), army explorer. From an engraving by
AMM eR STC IN Suerte reve ritc eter raiet Su eneclat a) sie decueiinds Si econs o cae EA a te sid OS os
. Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), artist. From a painting by himself. . . Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), artist. From a painting by Thomas Sully. . Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880), mathematician. From a photograph ...... . Timothy Pickering (1745-1829), statesman. From an engraving by T. B.
Wrelchtonaspainting by Gilbert Stuarts, o...2.¢ emcee ane st keels
. Zebulon Montgomery Pike (1779-1813), army explorer. From an engrav-
Aw Divx Gat OLE Cieim s buster estos eerie eke CRP ehe es Selo ee weeishs cs eames melee.
. Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851), statesman. From an engraving by
ERE OM ACLS La ce feats sere Pane opens ave hear aieyeicnei se RNS Le eH Sete coe Soot ane
. Joseph Priestley (1773-1804), chemist. From an engraving by W. Holl of
AmpAliEeMA sabia CaCEe StuAacts «cj caysavaitis Sele cates eres oa aan a, ee vs hak
. Samuel Purchas (1577-1628), author of ‘‘Purchas, his pilgrimage.’? From
eLTeTT raw Coeds Rey COOK: 2a be lc iaieis evar niems sc eieyeisivetctove mela ee are relavele
. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1784-1842), naturalist. From a wood
Ciireprodmctiomofa steel engravines vem ects sume tee sel eian laaeee aon
. William C. Redfield (1789-1857), meteorologist. From an engraving by
AVM Tew Rohit: Cla Ceieee scete 28. Sete Che Ae itd Soe hata oe ee CT ee a SES
. Charles Valentine Riley (1843-1895), entomologist. From a photograph. . David Rittenhouse (1732-1796), astronomer. From an engraving by J. B.
Konsaceonapaintinespy Cy WaPealenccc soccciae fae ioc biem codices bic os
. John Rodgers (1812-1882), naval explorer. From an engraving by A. H.
RGEC OS iro.) Stat AC ch PR PRI ICTR SLE Ve cn a Henry Darwin Rogers (1808-1866), geologist. From an engraving by eg Sn Et CLeL COT (7, seihtatelsineeiats vere eae ee Pe Ge aa caer a ev here's wears William Barton Rogers (1804-1882), founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From an engraving by H. W. Smith....................
+ 2:30
83.
List of Flates.
= Facing page.
‘Thomas Say (1787-1834), naturalist. From an engraving by Hoppner Meyer of a painting by Wood ..... 22... 2m eevee ese eee eee ene enes
84. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), naturalist and explorer. From an
eneraving by Ilman and: Sons 5555 «occ ose) < wise rie clelel sleiefeieoieleisieiel= =i ieini
85. Pietro Angelo Secchi (1818-1878), astronomer. From a wood cut......
86. Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), chemist. From a mezzotint by P. N.
Wiel ple. ssc caperes si diate 5 ci civts ofalectaletotosa) aheleiet=relehaler sy phsl omit ietiwes hol ancien ot
87. Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1752), founder of British Museum. From a steel
Gutamh pil tans noo oOdUoCUoRoDSUSI50 DN odUn DAS dODDGUdcGodOKDUEgOOURODE
88. James Edward Smith (1759-1828), botanical writer. From a photograph
(we hiisileag haul onomonhpaocdbodrab eo abooddGuoboNanooboDacOECUaO OES
89. John Smith (1579-1632), English explorer. From an engraving .......
90. Jakob Steendam (1616-1662), poet and naturalist. From a lithograph of
a Stecllenora vit reese erie teeter rake et terior een tients
gt. Isaac Ingalls Stevens (1818-1862), army explorer. From an engraving
DyPilfo Ce IMATE CS choco udenosepesonbonc ogubcoovooconodc as oUdadDenoDS
92. Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), founder of the Antiquarian Society in
Worcester, Mass. From an engraving by J.R.Smith................
93. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814), chemist and physi-
cist seHromanten gravity. sey inal er sricrtto stoic ioiiele reioiciere ener eieierere
94. John Torrey (1796-1873), botanist. From a lithograph......:.........
95. John Tradescant (1608-1662), traveler and naturalist. From a reproduc-
tiom.of an Olds engera wane saci <cleistn «o's bss cerersraisi J anaica evel terete teretor ie rete
96. Gerard Troost (1776-1850), mineralogist and geologist. From a steel
CU PLAVING 3/5). hae alesse oer oie Seka bids erev op aeTae to erst cs oreo ster oe ee Pare
g7. William Petit Trowbridge (1828-1892), civil and mechanical engineer.
Bromma, photosra pli nr-cqayets ec oierere cettcetcryeieiele re nyets cietake et eee rere
98. Stephen Van Rensselaer (1765-1839), founder of the Van Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. From an engraving by G. Parker of a minia-
ture by’ GC. Fraser src iiaeiisalesn stele orois elote alate stokeleysiehubela io arate te oie ee ean
gg. Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616), Peruvian historian. From an early
engtaving by Carmona s.s<. 5.5 tise se tio oee eae eee ee eee
too. Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846), physician. From an engraving by TR ROVE 3 5. 20e\ e107 ereyieehieeye) she loci oiers Syatels « /stayses) sforcialstons erstorcee OeiOe peer Teens
tor. Francis Wayland (1796-1865), president of Brown University. From an engraving by Ji CaBUtire rn i.jcpete se Sie nryosncieieieyers siale tee ee eee
102, David Ames Wells (1828-1898), political economist. From an engraving by H.W. Smaitl cere oie esteem mnie ne els Seperate eee Ree
103. William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894), philologist. From an engraving by J. Co Bute ota schists .ctchereremrss rata sierelcoe saree yee nictars s eicle ete cites eee
104. Charles Wilkes (1798-1877), naval explorer. From an engraving by A. HY. Ritebie io /o.' oa ibt org ater sjare role encode Cason tee ISR ee TT eer
105. Hugh Williamson (1735-1819), promoter of scientific enterprises. From an etching by Albert Rosenthal of a painting by J. Trumbull .........
106. Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), ornithologist. From an old engraving. . 107. Caspar Wistar (1761-1818), professor of anatomy. From an engraving by J.B Longacte of a painting by, Bi Ouse, nr meeec ii emer eens
108. Jeffries Wyman (1814-1874), comparative anatomist. From an engrav- ing by LS: Pundersom. 5:5; sass se eracaee ae eee eee
109. Edward Livingston Youmans (1821-1887), founder of Popular Science
Monthly. From an engraving by C. Schlecht...... ROC AC ore Sock
398
4o2 406
410 414
418 422
426 430 434
438 442
446 450
454
458 462 466 470 474 478 482
486 490
494 498
500
Reo Orkeik
OF THE MEETING HELD IN COMMEMORATION OF THE LIFE AND SERVICES
GEORGE BROWN GOODE,
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the United States National Museum.
Z = - = 9 = TP 7 7 a 9 : Pip reed & : * : 7 a >! 7 -
Agane tab
MEWOR DAT EX ER CILSES:
On Saturday evening, February 13, 1897, a meeting was held in the lecture room of the United States National Museum to commemorate the life and services of George Brown Goode. Over four hundred persons were assembled, representing the seven scientific societies, the patriotic and historical societies, of Washington, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Society of Naturalists.
The programme was as follows;
MEMORIAL MEETING.
You ARE invited to attend a Memorial Meeting, under the auspices ‘ of the Joint Commission of the Scientific Societies, and in co-operation with the Patriotic and Historical Societies, of Washington, to commem- orate the life and services of
GEORGE Brown Goopk, LL. D.,
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the United States National Museum. The meeting will be held in the Lecture Room of the National Museum, Saturday evening, February 13, 1897, at 8 o’clock. Washington, February 6, 1897.
PROGRAMME. Introductory remarks by the President of the Jot Commission, Hon. GARDINER G. HUBBARD
Address by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,
DRIgSS ses LANGER
Goode as a Historian and Citizen,
Hon. WitiitAm L. WILSON
Goode as a Naturalist,
PRoF. HENRY F. OSBORN
Goode’s Activities in Relation to American Science
PROP. WiILLtAM HH. DAL
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
By GARDINER GREENE HUBBARD, President of the Joint Commission of the Scientific Societies.
This day was selected as the day to pay tribute to Doctor G. Brown Goode, as it is his natal day. On my return to Boston from the maritime provinces last summer, I heard with deep regret of the death, a few days before, of Doctor George Brown Goode. ‘To me he had been a friend; to me his death was a deep personal loss and sorrow. To him I have turned for counsel, for advice, for sympathy, and his response was prompt, earnest, and cordial. Do I not express the feeling of all who knew him? Never was there a truer and more intelligent counselor, a more sympathetic friend, a more ready helper, a more kindly nature.
None knew him but to love him, None named him but to praise.
It was at Twin Oaks, one of the last Sundays in June, that he spent the last morning with us. He walked with us through the grounds’ twining ways, pointing out the beauties of the flowers, which he was so quick to see, and showing a knowledge of the habits and needs of every tree and shrub. He passed through the grounds to the library and looked over a portfolio of recent Japanese prints. He showed a perfect familiarity with them, selecting the good, rejecting the poor, and know- ing the value of each. With books he was equally familiar, and more than once suggested some rare book that I should like to obtain. Books were his friends and companions. His reading was extensive and varied. He knew my pedigree better than I, and corrected mistakes that I had made in preparing my genealogy for the Society of Colonial Wars, in which organization he was deeply interested. His mind was versatile, his interests widespread, his tastes refined, his judgment correct. He was a true lover of nature, of art, of beauty everywhere. He heralded to us the first coming of the birds, he knew their notes, and welcomed the opening of the spring blossoms. He was alive to every bit of earth and sky. With all the pressure of numerous and varied cares and respon- sibilities, he lent a ready ear, a helping hand, to all who asked his aid. He would read and correct a manuscript for a friend, conduct another
5
6 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
through the Museum and open to him its treasures, or prepare a scheme for an exposition at Chicago or Atlanta. Into the work of the Museum he threw his whole heart and life. He knew it in all its strength and weakness, its deficiencies, its wealth, its possibilities, and therefore believed in its glorious future. He knew it in all its different depart- ments—in its minute details. He welcomed every new object that was brought into the Museum and directed its disposition. He refused the appointment of Commissioner of Fisheries and remained in charge of the Museum at a smaller salary, because he felt his services were more needed there. He was urged last summer to go to the Seal Islands, a trip he would gladly have taken, but he was reluctant to leave his work. He remained to die at his post. ,
Others will speak of him in his public relations; others can estimate his scientific attainments and the debt of gratitude the Museum owes to his faithful and skillful administration; others will weave and lay upon his tomb wreaths and garlands. I bring but a few violets, the expres- sion of my personal love and esteem. He was a friend whom I loved and whom I miss from my daily life.
OPENING ADDRESS.
By SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
While I am aware that it is only fitting that I should say something here about one I knew so well as the late Doctor Goode, I feel the occa- sion a trying one, for he was so dear a friend that my very nearness and sense of a special bereavement must be a sufficient excuse for asking your indulgence, since I can not speak of him even yet without pain, and I must say but little.
Here are some who knew him still longer than I, and many who can estimate him more justly in all his scientific work, and to those who can perform this task so much better, I leave it. I will only try to speak, however briefly,. from a personal point of view, and chiefly of those moral qualities in which our friendship grew, and of some things apart from his scientific life which this near friendship showed me.
As I first remember him it seems to me, looking back in the light of more recent knowledge, that it was these moral qualities which I first appreciated, and that if there was one which more than another formed the basis of his character it was sincerity—a sincerity which was the ground of a trust and confidence such as could be instinctively given, even from the first, only to an absolutely loyal and truthful nature. In him duplicity of motive even, seemed hardly possible, for, though he was in a good sense, worldly wise, he walked by a single inner light, and this made his road clear even when he was going over obscure ways, and made him often a safer guide than such wisdom alone would have done. He was, I repeat, a man whom you first trusted instinctively, but also one in whom every added knowledge explained and justified this confidence.
This sincerity, which pervaded the whole character, was united with an unselfishness so deep-seated that it was not conscious of itself, and was, perhaps, not always recognized by others. It is asubject of regret to me, now it is too late, that I seem myself to have thus taken it too much as a matter of course in the past, at times like one I remember, when, as I afterwards learned, he was suffering from wretched health, which he concealed so successfully while devoting himself to my help, that I had no suspicion till long after of the effort this must have cost
7
8 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
him. He lived not for himself, but for others and for his work. There was no occasion when he could not find time for any call to aid, and the Museum was something to which he was willing to give of his own slender means.
Connected with this was an absence of any wish to personally domi- nate others or to force his own personal ways upon them. It is pleas- antest to live our own life if we can, and with him every associate and subordinate had a moral liberty that is not always enjoyed, for apart from his official duties, he obtruded himself upon no one with advice, and his private opinion was to be sought, not proffered.
His insight into character was notable, and:it was perhaps due as much as anything to a power of sympathy that produced a gentleness in his private judgment of others, which reminded one of the saying, that if we could comprehend everything we could pardon everything. He com- prehended and he pardoned.
Associate this tolerance of those weaknesses in others, even which he did not share, with the confidence he inspired and with this clear insight, and we have some idea of the moral qualities which tempered the authority he exercised in his administrative work, and which were the underlying causes of his administrative excellence. I do not know whether a power of reading character is more intuitive or acquired; at any rate without it men may be governed, but not in harmony, and must be driven rather than led. Doctor Goode was in this sense a leader, quite apart from his scientific competence. Every member of the force he controlled, not only among his scientific associates, but down to the humblest employees of the Museum, was an individual to him, with traits of character which were his own and not another’s, and which were recognized in all dealings. And in this I think he was peculiar, for I have known no man who seemed to possess this sympathetic insight in such a degree; and certainly it was one of the sources of his strength.
I shall have given, however, a wrong idea of him if I leave anyone under the impression that this sympathy led to weakness of rule. He knew how to say ‘‘no,’’ and said it as often as any other, and would reprehend where occasion called, in terms the plainest and most uncom- promising a man could use, speaking so when he thought it necessary, even to those whose association was voluntary, but who somehow were not alienated, as they would have been by such censure from another. ‘“He often refused me what I most wanted,” said one of his staff to me, “but Inever went to sleep without having in my own mind forgiven him.”’
I have spoken of some of the moral qualities which made all rely upon him, and which were the foundation of his ability to deal with men. ‘T'o them was joined that scientific knowledge without which he could not have been a Museum administrator, but even with this knowledge he could not have been what he was, except from the fact that he loved the Museum and its administration above every other pursuit, even, I think,
Memorval Meeting. 9
above his own special branch of biological science. He was a man of the widest interests I have ever known, so that whatever he was speak- ing of at any moment, seemed to be the thing he knew best. It was often hard to say, then, what love predominated; but I think that he had, on the whole, no pleasure greater than that in his Museum administra- tion, and that, apart from his family interests and joys, this was the deepest love of all. He refused advantageous offers to leave it, though I ought to gratefully add here, that his knowledge of my reliance upon him and his unselfish desire to aid me, were also among his determining motives in remaining. ‘They were natural ones in such a man.
What were the results of this devotion may be comprehensively seen in the statement that in the year in which he was first enrolled among the officers of the Museum the entries of collections numbered less than 200,000, and the staff, including honorary collaborators and all subordi- nates, thirteen persons, and by comparing these early conditions with what they became under his subsequent management.
Professor Baird at the first was an active manager, but from the time that he became Secretary of the Institution he devolved more and more of the Museum duties on Doctor Goode, who for nine years preceding his death was practically in entire charge of it. It is strictly within the truth then to say that the changes which have taken place in the Museum in that time are more his work than any other man’s, and when we find that the number of persons employed has grown from thirteen to over two hundred, and the number of specimens from 200,000 to over 3,000,000, and consider that what the Museum now is, its scheme and arrangement, with almost all which make it distinctive; are chiefly Doctor Goode’s, we have some of the evidence of his administrative capacity. He was fitted to rule and administer both men and things, and the Museum under his management was, as someone has called it, ‘“A house full of ideas and a nursery of living thought.’’
Perhaps no one can be a ‘“‘naturalist,’’ in the larger sense, without being directly a lover of Nature and of all natural sights and sounds. One of his family says:
He taught us all the forest trees, their fruits and flowers in season, and to know them when bare of leaves by their shapes; all the wayside shrubs, and even the flow- ers of the weeds; all the wild birds and their notes, and the insects. His ideal of an old age was to have a little place of his own ina mild climate, surrounded by his books for rainy days, and friends who cared for plain living and high thinking, with a chance to help someone poorer than he.
He was a loving and quick observer, and in these simple natural joys his studies were his recreations, and were closely connected with his literary pursuits.
I have spoken of his varied interests and the singular fullness of his knowledge in fields apart from biologic research. He was a genealogist of professional completeness and exactitude, and a historian, and of him in
1) Memorial of George Brown Goode.
these capacities alone, a biography might be written; but his well-founded claim to be considered a literary man as well as a man of science, rests as much on the excellent English style; clear, direct, unpretentious, in which he has treated these subjects, as on his love of literature in general. I pass them, however, with this inadequate mention, from my incompetence to deal with him as a genealogist, and because his aspect as a historian will be presented by another; but while I could only partly follow him in his genealogical studies, we had together, among other common tastes, that love of general literature just spoken of, and I, who have been a widely discursive reader, have never met a mind in touch with more far- away and disconnected points than his, nor one of more breadth and variety of reading, outside of the range of its own specialty. This read- ing was also, however, associated with a love of everything which could illustrate his special science on this literary side. The extent of this illustration is well shown by the wealth and aptness of quotation in the chapter headings of his American Fishes, his Game Fishes of North America, and the like, and in his knowledge of everything thus remotely connected with his ichthyologic researches, from St. Anthony’s Sermon to Fishes, to the Literature of Fish Cookery, while in one of his earliest papers, written at nineteen, his fondness for Isaac Walton and his familiarity with him, are evident. He hada love for everything to do with books, such as specimens of printing and binding, and for etchings and engravings, and he was an omnivorous reader, but he read to collect, and oftenest in connection with the enjoyment of his outdoor life and all natural things. One of these unpublished collections, The Music of Nature, contains literally thousands of illustrated poems or passages from his favorite poets.
These were his recreations, and among these little excursions into literature, ‘‘the most pathetic, and yet in some respects the most con- solatory,’’ says his literary executor, ‘‘seems to have been suggested by an article on the literary advantages of weak health, for with this thought in mind he had collected from various sources accounts of literary work done in feeble health, which he brought together under the title Mens Sana in Corpore /zsano.’’
Still another collection was of poems relating to music, of which he was an enthusiastic lover. He sang and played well, but this I only learned after his death, for it was characteristic of his utter absence of display, that during our nine years’ intimacy he never let me know that he had such accomplishments; though that he had a large acquaintance with musical instruments I was, of course, aware from the collections he had made.
We must think of him with added sympathy, when we know that he lost the robust health he once enjoyed, at that early time during his first connection with the Museum, when he gave himself with such uncalcu- lating devotion to his work as to overtask every energy and permanently impair his strength. It was only imperfectly restored when his excessive
Memorial Meeting. 3
labors in connection with the Centennial Exposition brought on another attack, and this condition was renewed at times through my acquaintance with him. When we see what he has done, we must remember, with now useless regret, under what conditions all this was accomplished.
I have scarcely alluded to his family life, for of his home we are not to speak here, further than to say that he was eminently a domestic man, finding the highest joys that life brought him with his family and children. Of those who hear me to-night most knew him personally, and will bear me witness, from his daily life, that he was a man one felt to be pure in heart as he was clean of speech, always sociable, always considerate of his associates, a most suggestive and helpful man; an eminently unselfish man—tmay I not now say that he was what we then did not recognize, in his simplicity, a gveat man?
It isa proof [says one who knew him] of the unconsciousness and unobstrusive- ness which chracterized Doctor Goode in all his associations and efforts that, until his death came, few, if any, even of his intimate friends, realized the degree to which he had become necessary to them. All acknoweledged his ability, relied on his sincerity, knew how loyally he served every cause he undertook. ‘The news of his death showed them for the first time what an element of strength he was in the work and ambitions of each of them. With a sudden shock they saw that their futures would have less of opportunity, less of enthusiasm and meaning, now that he was gone.
He has gone; and on the road where we are all going, there has not preceded us a man who lived more for others, a truer man, a more loyal friend.
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GOODE AS A HISTORIAN AND CITIZEN.
By WILLIAM LYNE WILSON, Postmaster-General of the United States.
It has been most appropriately assigned to those who saw, and were privileged to see, more of Doctor Goode than myself, in his domestic life and in daily official intercourse, to speak of his virtues and his most charming and lofty traits as a man; and to speak of him in his chosen field of science must be assigned to those who do not, like myself, stand outside of the pale of scientific attainment. The somewhat humbler part is mine to speak of Doctor Goode in those relations in life in which he was probably less known and less thought of than as a man of science or in other fields of his distinguished attainment.
The German professor, of whom it is related that on his deathbed he mourned the waste of his life work in expending his energies on the entire Greek language instead of concentrating them on the dative case, gives a ludicrous and extreme illustration of that necessity for division of labor and of specialization which all men recognize in this age of ours. In the field of intellectual, as in that of mechanical, occupation, the ‘‘jack-of-all-trades’’ is master of none; and while the rule for the intellectual man and for the great student must always be to endeavor to know everything of something and something of everything—at least of everything connected with that something—it is becoming more and more difficult in the compass of human life and human attainment to live up to that rule.
Doctor Goode was honored in his own country and in other countries as an eminent man of science, and deservedly so honored, and his lasting fame must rest upon his solid and substantial contributions to science and the advancement of human knowledge, on his eminent success as an administrator of scientific organizations, and on that work which all his life shows to have been most congenial to him—the bringing of science down to the interest and instruction of the people.
He was a richly endowed man, first with that capacity and that resistless bent toward the work in which he attained his great distinction that made it a perennial delight to him; but he was scarcely less richly
13
I4 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
endowed in his more unpretending and large human sympathies, and it was this latter that distinguished him as a citizen and a historian.
It has been said time and again, with more or less truth, of the great English universities, and possibly of similar great schools in our own country, that they tend to make a caste, and that men who come out from them find themselves separated from the great mass of their fellow- citizens, out of sympathy with the thought, the action, and the daily life of the generation in which they move. ‘This certainly could never be said of Doctor Goode. As a citizen he was full of patriotic American enthusiasm. He understood, as all must understand who look with seriousness upon the great problems that confront a free people and who measure the difficulties of those problems—he understood that at least one preparation for the discharge of the duties of American citizenship was the general education of the people, and so he advocated as far as possible bringing within the reach of all the people not only the oppor- tunities but the attractions and the incitements to intellectual living. It was one of his favorite ideas that there should be in every town, and even in the villages of the country, at least some sort of a library, at least some sort of a reading room, at least some sort of a museum, to quicken and generate the intellectual life of that community, and possibly to stimulate men to the high career which he and others like him have been stimulated to from such beginnings.
But Doctor Goode knew also that mere education—literary or scien- tific—whatever it might do for the individual, however much of power or distinction it might give to him, and however much of personal enjoy- ment and luxury it might bring to him, is not the only thing required to make an American citizen, and I am satisfied that the work which he did in the field of American history was connected, closely connected, with this general idea. It is not only that we have free institutions in this country, it is not only that we have universal education, at least within the reach of the people of this country; we have as our chief reli- ance for success in the future, as it has been our chief safety in the past, the rich political heritage of hundreds of years’ training in these institu- tions, and Doctor Goode, with the quick and warm sympathies of the man and of the historian, seems to have felt that he could do no greater service to the people of his day and generation and to his country than in the most attractive and concrete way (if I may so express it) to lead the young men of this country to the study of the history of the past— to the deeds and the writings of the great men to whom we owe the foundation and the perpetuation of our institutions. This was probably somewhat the result of his personal sympathies, feeling that what influenced him would influence others, and it was a wise and proper conclusion.
The study of the past, the study of the lives of those who have been eminent and useful men in the past, is a potent influence on high, intel-
Memorial Meeting. 2S
ligent, patriotic effort in the present. The wod/esse oblige of a patriotic and substantial ancestry, not only for the individual but for the country itself, is a power whose influence we can scarcely exaggerate. I have thought, as I have visited the great universities of Kngland and seen in their common halls, where once a day the students meet to partake of one meal at least in common, as upon their walls I have seen in living canvas the portraits of the great men of their special colleges—of Isaac Barron, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and all the English bishops at Trinity—and each exhibiting groups of those who have risen to useful- ness and done great deeds in literature, in science, in public life, in war, or in any of the elements and fields of English greatness, that there was a mute appeal to every Englishman from those walls to be worthy of his country and of his college. ;
It must have been something of this idea that induced the old Roman to place in the entrance to his house the effigies of every member of his family who had borne a high office in the state. As his son came in and out of that house, he passed between effigies, as lifelike as Roman art could make them, of every member of that family who had held a high office, or magistracy, in the Roman commonwealth. He was stimulated to patriotism by the examples of his fathers—of those who had led armies, of those who had extended the limits of the empire, of those who had triumphed on returning from foreign fields of conquest and vic- tory, of those whose names were revered in the annals of his country— and so it must have been, consciously or unconsciously, some feeling of this kind that seems almost from Doctor Goode’s youth to have led him into the field of genealogical inquiry and study, led him into the field of historic study, grouping his studies, as he seems to have done, around great and inspiring characters.
Perhaps no family in this country has had so perfect a book, so com- plete a study of all of its branches, as Doctor Goode gave to the family whose name he bore in that book entitled Virginia Cousins, and it is especially gratifying to me to know that Virginia history, so much neglected, was perhaps the favorite field of Doctor Goode’s study and investigation. He was a student of the writings of Washington, and gathered all the material he could find about that great Virginian. He was a student of the writings of Jefferson; he was a student of the lives of other distinguished men of that old Commonwealth, and I am told that he had in contemplation the publication of a book to be called Virginia Worthies,-in which doubtless he would have tried to give the proper standing to that minor and second class of Virginia’s great men of whom the country at large knows so much less to-day than it ought to know.
Not only, however, in the study of the men and the history of the Commonwealth from which in one line of his ancestry he was sprung was Doctor Goode a student. He was a student of American history at
16 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
large. He was one of the Council of the American Historical Associa- tion, and it was particularly through his efforts that the connection between that association and the Smithsonian Institution was brought about. He was one of the organizers here but a few months ago of the Southern History Association, and took great interest in the work that is projected by it. He was connected with the great organizations, the Sons of the American Revolution and the Sons of the Revolution, presi- dent of the first and vice-president of the other, and not as a mere office- holder, not as a mere member, but as a zealous, enthusiastic, intelligent worker.
But Doctor Goode was not only a historian in this respect and in this peculiar way. He was also a historian of science, and he seems here likewise to have followed the same general idea of grouping scientific history—the history of scientific progress—around the particular men and individuals connected with that progress.
Tam assured by those who are more capable of speaking authoritatively on such a subject than I am, that in certain papers of his, partly pub- lished, and partly as yet unpublished, he has given us the most interest- ing and instructive history yet produced of the progress of science in the United States; so that it is not attributing to Doctor Goode a novel and undeserved character to speak of him to-night as a historian. Had his life been spared, in his peculiar way, in his own personal and attractive manner, he would doubtless have made most substantial contributions to the study of American history, and I can not doubt, as I have already said, that in doing this he was impelled by the patriotic idea that he was helping to build up a strong American intelligent citizenship in the country he loved so well.
GOODE AS A NATURALIST.
By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN, DaCosta Professor of Zoology, Columbia University.
The designation ‘‘ naturalist’? was one which Goode richly earned and which he held most dear, and our deep sorrow is that his activity as a naturalist extended only over a quarter of a century. We are cheered by the thought that he was a man of whom no adverse word can ever be spoken either in science or in character. We think of both at this time, because in him the man and the profession were inseparable and con- stantly interacting. His scientific virtues were of the order rare as the Christian virtues, and we can not thoroughly understand his scientific career unless we understand him as a man. Errors of judgment, mis- leading tenets, and adherence to false hypotheses among some of the most gifted of our professional ancestors have arisen as often from defect of principle and from personal prejudices as from defect of knowledge. We see in our friend, on the other hand, that the high standard of scien- tific achievement was constantly parallel with and very largely the out- growth of a high standard of personal character and motive.
In brief, the work of the true naturalist is ever lighted by the four lamps, of love, of truth, of breadth, and of appreciation, and all of these shone brightly upon the path of Goode. His love of nature was inborn, predetermining his career, and so far surpassing his self-interest we fear it is only too true that he sacrificed his life for the diffusion of natural truth. So far as I know, he never entered a scientific controversy and was never under temptation to warp or deflect facts to support an hypothesis; yet he was incapable of tampering with truth under any circumstances which might have arisen. His presidential address of 1887 before the Biological Society of Washington showed him as scrupulous not to overestimate as he was eager not to underestimate the existing status of American science. While largely cultivated by wide experience in contact with nature and men, his breadth of view was certainly innate. If Goode had a fault, it was that his interests were too numerous and his sympathies too broad. He displayed not only a warm appreciation of those around him and an enthusiasm for contemporary research, but an exceptional sense of the close bonds between the present and the past—
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18 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
as seen in his admiration for the pioneers of American science and his repeated vindication of their services. This passion for history led to an important phase of his literary work. His fine addresses, The Begin- nings of Natural History in America (1886), The Beginnings of Amer- ican Science (1887), The Literary Labors of Benjamin Franklin (1890), The Origin of the National Scientific and Educational Institutions of the United States (1890), and An Account of the Smithsonian Institution (1895), sprang from the same instinct which prompted him to compile the valuable bibliographies of Baird, of Girard, of Lea, and of Sclater, and to undertake the remarkable genealogy of his own family entitled Virginia Cousins. ‘The time between 1887 and 1895 which he devoted to these subjects caused some of his fellow-naturalists anxiety; yet I fancy this work was largely sought by him for diversion and rest, just as Michael Foster tells us that philosophy and controversy served as recreation to Huxley, at a time when overwork had given hima passing distaste for morphology.
His trend of life guided by these four beacon lights was swayed by two countercurrents—first, his strong impulses as an original investiga- tor, and, second, his convictions as to the duty of spreading the knowl- edge of nature. These currents moved him alternately. The most superficial view of his career shows that his whole environment fostered his public spirit and made difficult and at times impossible the retirement so essential to studies in nature.
Goode’s practical and public achievements for natural history there- fore do him even more honor than his writings, because from June, 1870, when he graduated from Wesleyan University, to September, 1896, administrative service became paramount, and he was free to devote only the odd intervals of his time to research. Our great gain in the national institutions he has advanced is our corresponding loss in ichthyology and the kindred branches of zoology.
Goode’s successful work in the natural history courses at Wesleyan led at graduation to a place in the college museum, where in 1870 he at once showed his great talent for systematic arrangement. In further preparation for zoology, he went to Harvard, and for a few months came under the genial influence of Louis Agassiz. But the turning point in his life came in 1872, when, working as a volunteer upon the United States Fish Commission, at Eastport, he met Spencer F. Baird. The kind of simple but irresistible foree which Abraham Lincoln exerted among statesmen Baird seems to have exerted among naturalists. He at once noted young Goode’s fine qualities, adopted him, and rapidly came to be the master spirit in his scientific life. Goode delighted to work with a man so full of all that constitutes true greatness. He fre- quently spoke of Baird as his master, and intimate friends say that he never showed quite the same buoyant spirit after Baird’s death—he felt the loss so keenly. Baird took Goode to Washington in the winter of 1872 and practically determined his career, for he promoted him rapidly
Memorial Meeting. 19
through every grade of the Fish Commission and Museum service. It is hard to realize now the intensely rapid and eager development of our national scientific institutions in those years.
No doubt Baird’s mantle fell fittingly upon Goode’s shoulders, and he had all but the magnificent physique of his master to qualify him for this heavy burden. His talents and methods were of a different order. Both men enjoyed universal admiration, respect, and even love, but Baird drove men before him with quiet force while Goode drew men after him. Lacking the self-confidence of Baird, Goode was rather per- suasive than insistent. His success of administration also came partly from an instinctive knowledge of human nature and his large faculty of putting himself in other men’s shoes. He sought out the often latent best qualities of the men around him and developed them. When things were out of joint and did not move his way, he waited with infinite patience for the slow operation of time and common sense to set them right. He was singularly considerate of opinion. Not ‘‘I think,’’ but “Don’t you think,’’ was his way of entering a discussion. I am reminded of the gentleness of my teacher, Francis Balfour, when one of his students carelessly destroyed a rare and valuable preparation, as I learn from one of Goode’s associates that under similar provocation, without a word of reproof, he stooped over to repair the damage himself. He was fertile of original ideas and suggestions, full of invention and of new expedients, studying the best models at home and abroad, but never bound by any traditions of system or of classification. He showed these qualities in a marked degree in the remarkable fisheries exhibit which he conceived and executed for Berlin in 1879, and continued to show them in his rapid development of the scope as well as of the detail of a great museum. ‘To all his work also he brought a refined artistic taste, shown in his methods of printing and labeling, as well as in his encour- agement of the artistic, and, therefore, the truthful and realistic develop- ment of taxidermy in the arrangement of natural groups of animals. To crown all, like Baird, he entered into the largest conception of the wide- reaching responsibilities of his office under the Government, fully realiz- ing that he was not at the head of a university or of a metropolitan museum, but of the Museum of a great nation. Every reasonable request from another institution met a prompt response. I well recall Goode’s last visit to the Anierican Museum in New York, and his hearty approval of the work there, especially his remark, ‘‘I am glad to see these things being done so well in this country.’’ Not the advancement of Washing- ton science but of American science was his dominating idea.
In fact, every act and every word of Goode’s breathed the scientific creed which he published in 1888:
The greatest danger to science is, perhaps, the fact that all who have studied at all within the last quarter of a century have studied its rudiments and feel competent
to employ its methods and its language and to form judgments on the merits of cur- rent work. . . . Inthe meantime the professional men of science, the scholars,
20 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
and the investigators seem to me to be strangely indifferent to the questions as to how the public at large is to be made familiar with the resultsof their labors. . . . It may be that the use of the word naturalist is to become an anachronism, and that we are all destined to become generically biologists and specifically morphologists, histologists, embryologists, physiologists. :
I can but believe, however, that it is the duty of every scientific scholar, however minute his specialty, to resist in himself, and in the professional circles which sur- round him, the tendency toward narrowing technicality in thought and sympathy, and above all in the education of nouprofessional students. . . .
Ican not resist the feeling that American men of science are in a large degree responsible if their fellow-citizens are not fully awake to the claims of scientific endeavor in their midst.
I am not in sympathy with those who feel that their dignity is lowered when their investigations lead toward improvement in the physical condition of mankind, but I feel that the highest function of science is to minister to their mental and moral welfare. Here in the United States, more than in any other country, it is necessary that sound, accurate knowledge and a scientific manner of thought should exist among the people, and the man of science is becoming, more than ever, the natural custodian of the treasured knowledge of the world. ‘To him, above all others, falls the duty of organizing and maintaining the institutions for the diffusion of knowl- edge, many of which have been spoken of in these addresses—the schools, the museums, the expositions, the societies, the periodicals. To him, more than to any other American, should be made familiar the words of President Washington in his farewell address to the American people:
‘‘Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinions it should be enlightened.”’
As a naturalist Goode did not close any of the windows opening out into nature. His breadth of spirit in public affairs displayed itself equally in his methods of field and sea work and in the variety of his observa- tions and writings. While fishes became his chief interest, he knew all the Hastern species of birds after identifying and arranging the collection in his college museum. He loved plants, and in the latter years of his life took great pleasure in the culture of the old-fashioned garden around his house. He was not wedded to his desk, to dry bones, nor to alcoholic jars. His sea studies and travels ranged as early as 1872 from the Ber- mudas to Eastport on the Bay of Fundy; to Casco Bay in 1873, to Noank, on Long Island Sound, in 1874. Here he conceived a great Index Bibliography of American Ichthyology, a work which he did not live to complete, and here he met his future colleague, Bean, who describes him as ‘‘a young man with plump cheeks and a small moustache.’’ During the following two years his assistant curatorship at the National Museum confined him, but in 1877 he was studying the fisheries off Halifax, and in 1879 at Provincetown. ‘The work of the fishery census was starting up in earnest, and Goode was busy planning and getting together his men. Special agents were sent out, to every part of the coast and to the Great Lakes, to gather information. Goode worked at it himself on Cape Cod, and manifested the same enthusiasm as in every other piece of work he took up. He interested himself in getting together
Memorial Meeting. 21
a collection representing the methods of the fisheries and the habits of the fishermen. Neglecting neither the most trivial nor important objects, branching out into every collateral matter, he showed his grasp both of principles and of details.
His literary bent and facility of written expression showed itself before his graduation at Wesleyan in the College Argus, which contains seven brief papers, including his first scientific article, prophetically entitled Our Museum. He contributed to the American Naturalist in 1871 a note upon The Billfish in Fresh Water, and in 1872 A Sea Bird Inland. He published and presented before the American Association in 1873 his. first paper of importance, entitled Do Snakes Swallow Their Young? These studies of real merit foreshadow two marked features of his later work—first, his recognition of the importance of distribution, which cul- minated in the preparation of his unfinished memoir upon the Geographi- cal Distribution of Deep Sea Fishes; second, his close observance of the habits of animals, which was of marked usefulness in his subsequent Fish Comunission service and treatises upon fish-culture. His Catalogue of the Fishes of the Bermudas, from his visit in 1872, indicates how early in life he had thought out a thoroughly philosophical method of studying a local fauna: ‘‘In working up my notes,’’ he says, ‘‘I have endeavored to supplement previous descriptions by (1) descriptions of the colors of the fishes while living, (2) notes on size and proportions, (3) observa- tions on habits, (4) hints in reference to the origin and meaning of their popular names, (5) notes upon modes of capture and economic-value.’’ He increased the number of recorded species from seven to seventy-five, and gave a careful analysis of their probable geographical derivation.
Many of his briefer papers deal directly with the biological problems which attracted his interest, especially among reptiles and fishes, touch- ing such questions as migration, coloring, albinism, mimicry, parasitism, feeding and breeditg habits, and the relation of forest protection to the protection of fishes.
It is difficult to classify the papers, long and short, which we find rap- idly succeeding each other in the valuable bibliography prepared by Doctor Adler and Mr. Geare. Of his 193 independent papers, 21 are biological, g treat of reptiles and amphibians, 38 are devoted to the structure, life habits, and distribution of the fishes, in addition to 15 purely systematic contributions upon the fishes. Among the former are his large memoirs upon the Menhaden, his shorter treatises upon the Trunk Fishes, the Pampanos, the Sword Fishes, and the Eel. "The work of the Fish Com- mission is described, and published at home and abroad, in 30 reports and popular papers. The special branch of Fisheries Exhibits is treated in 8 papers, and of fish-culture in 12 papers. Besides his 14 reports as Director of the National Museum he published, between 1881 and 1896, 13 papers developing the theory and practice of museum administra- tion, leading up to his very notable articles, Museums of the Future,
22 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
Museum History and Museums of History in 1889, and his invalu- able memoir upon Museum Administration in 1895. His labors and writings placed him in the lead of museum experts in this country and upon the level of the distinguished leader of museum development in England, Sir William Flower. The closing sentence of his address before the English Museums Association must be quoted. ‘‘The degree of civ- ilization to which any nation, city, or province has attained is best shown by the character of its public museums and the liberality with which they are maintained.’’
His popular works include the Game Fishes of the United States, pub- lished in 1879, a book written in charming literary style, besides innu- merable short articles in the Chautauquan, Forest and Stream, and Science. In 1888 appeared his American Fishes: A Popular Treatise upon the Game and Food Fishes of North America, with special refer- ence to habits and methods of capture. These writings give us a further insight not only into the two sides of Goode’s scientific nature, the theo- retical and the practical, but into his artistic and poetical sentiment and into the wide extent of his reading. Besides the long list enumerated above, he published 51 joint ichthyological papers with G. Brown, W. O. Atwater, R. E. Earll, A. Howard Clark, Joseph W. Collins, Newton P. Scudder, but his main collaborateur was Tarleton H. Bean. Under their names appear 35 papers, but, chief of all, the Oceanic Ichthyology, a Treatise on the Deep Sea and Pelagic Fishes of the World, based chiefly upon the collections made by steamers Blake, Albatross, and Fish Hawk in the Northwestern Atlantic.
In 1877 Goode saw his first deep-sea fish drawn fresh from the bottom, and experienced a sensation which he thus describes in the preface of his monograph:
The studies which have led to the writing of this book were begun in the summer of 1877, when the first deep-sea fishes were caught by American nets on the coast of North America. This took place in the Gulf of Maine, 44 miles east of Cape Ann, on the 19th of August, when from the side of the United States Fish Commission steamer Speedwell the trawlnet was cast in 160 fathoms of water. ‘The writers were both standing by the mouth of the net when, as the seamen lifted the end of the bag, two strange forms fell out on the deck. A single glance was enough to tell us that they were new to our fauna, and probably unknown to science. They seemed like visitors from another world, and none of the strange forms which have since passed through our laboratory have brought half as much interest and enthusiasm. Macrurus bairdii and Lycodes verrillii were simply new species of well-known deep-dwelling genera, and have since been found to be very abundant on the conti- nental slope, but they were among the first fruits of that great harvest in the field of oceanic ichthyology which we have had the pleasure to garner in the fifteen years which have passed since that happy and eventful morning. It seems incredible that American naturalists should not then have known that a few miles away there was a
fauna as unlike that of our coast as could be found in the Indian Ocean or the seas ollChinay =
In one of the latest of his 45 contributions to the Bulletins of the United States National Museum is the description of the discovery of the
Memorial Meeting. 22
new deep-sea Chimeeroid, for which, true to his appreciation of the past, he proposed the name /Yarvrzotta, in memory of Thomas Harriott, the earliest English naturalist in America.
The quaint, old-fashioned style of some of Goode’s essays gives us an insight into his historic sense and his reversion to the ideas and principles of his Virginia ancestors. Seldom have we known the loyal conservative spirit, of reverence for old institutions, fealty to independence of socie- ties, combined with such a grandly progressive spirit in the cooperation of the Government with the state, and of one country with another in the promotion of science.
Again, what impresses us most is Goode as the apostle of scientific knowledge. A conviction of his mission in life breathes forth from his earliest papers in the College Argus to his final appeal in Science for the ‘“Admission of American students to the French universities.’’
One of his intimate friends writes:
Sometimes we talked of more far-reaching matters, and in such discussions I often took a position I had no faith in, hoping to draw him out. I remember once we fell to talking of the province of science, and for the sake of argument I took the position that most scientific work was merely a form of intellectual amusement, and benefited no one. He became quite earnest in his protest against that view, and asserted his belief that the majority of scientific men were working toward the improvement of things and that it was the destiny of science to be the salvation of the world. At another time he unfolded the idea that man through science was approaching step by step nearer the Infinite Ruler of the Universe, and that it was only through these activities that he could hope to reach his proper destiny; that every amelioration of life, every improvement in manners, every change in theological tenets was a token of man’s unfolding through the working of intellectual forces.
Our lasting regret must be that Goode’s life terminated just as he had richly earned the right to retire from the scientific service of his country— from your service and mine, my friends—to devote himself more exclu- sively to his own researches.
As early as 1880, during the Herculean task of entering the new National Museum building, Goode remarked to one of his friends, ‘‘ We have had pretty hard scrambling—I think we will take a rest presently ’’— but, alas! the rest days never came. One duty after another fell heavily upon his too-willing shoulders. All must have observed in later years a certain quiet melancholy which marked his overwork, and conscious inability to cope with all that his ambitious and resourceful spirit prompted. None the less he showed a continuous and rapid intellectual development during the last ten years of his life, and it was evident that his powers were constantly expanding, and that his brightest and most productive days were to come in his projected independent and joint researches. As before noted, his Geographical Distribution of Deep Sea Fishes was nearly completed, the charts having been exhibited before the Biological Society, and a mass of voluminous notes and valuable observations are ready to show that the distribution of deep-sea fishes is far from being so general as has been supposed, and that there are certain
24 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
well-defined thalassic faunal regions. Another projected work for which extensive materials were collected was upon the Fishes of America, in which Doctor ‘Theodore Gill was to have cooperated.
Goode was always encouraged by his supreme faith in the reward of honest intellectual labor, and it is pleasant to recall now that he took the keenest satisfaction in the completion and publication of the Oceanic Ichthyology, which revived in him all his old natural-history spirit. He regarded it as his chief life work, and once observed to his fellow-writer, Tarleton Bean, ‘‘It will be our monument,’’ little foreseeing that so scon after its publication he would be gone and that his friends and admirers all over the world would share this very thought in receiving the fine monograph a few weeks after his sudden and unexpected death.
Our friend has gone to his fathers. As a public-spirited naturalist he leaves us the tender memory and the noble example, which helps us and will help many coming men into the higher conception of duty in the service and promotion of the truth. We can not forget his smile nor his arm passing through the arm of his friend. Thinking little of him- self and highly of others, faithful to his duties and loyal to his friends, full of good cheer and hopefulness—it is hard for us to close up the ranks and march on without him.
GOODE’S ACTIVITIES IN RELATION TO AMERICAN SCIENCE.
By WILLIAM HEALEY DALL, Paleontologist, United States Geological Survey.
Most persons unacquainted with the interior working of our executive bureaus have an impression that they are the creation of law, in the sense in which the term ‘‘creation’’ was formerly used to describe the coming into being of some part of the material universe. Perhaps this impres- sion is seldom definitely formulated, but, nevertheless, it is common to hear arguments from intelligent people, bent on ameliorating govern- ment, which tacitly assume that an act of Congress by some inherent magic will accomplish that which they desire. It is a truism that whole schemes of social reorganization are built on no better foundation, and thousands of earnest reformers work, suffer, and even die for theories erected on this hypothesis.
Whatever of truth there may be in the application of this idea to the purely business offices of the Government, where finance, commerce, invention, or transportation are provided for, nothing could be more mis- taken than its application to the scientific bureaus. For each and every one of them the world is indebted to some individual. In the majority of cases the man came with his purpose before the law was thought of, and his devotion to his self-imposed mission, his persistence, and his energy were the inciting causes of some lines in an appropriation bill, with all its potentialities, the seed of the present organization. Some- times the sower, given the opportunity to dig and water, was spared to reap the first fruits of the harvest. On other occasions worthy suc- cessors arose, bore the burden and heat of the day, and carried out the plans to final triumph. Thus, to Hassler and Bache we owe the Coast Survey, which has spread the fame of American achievements in geodetic science through every civilized community; to Hayden, King, and Powell are due the organization and success of the Geological Survey of the United States; to the initiative of Smithson and guiding hand of Henry we owe the Smithsonian Institution; the Fish Commission was the embodied work of Baird; and to Baird and Goode’s untiring labors we are indebted for the National Museum. ‘There remain very few per- sons with intimate personal knowledge of the unwritten history of the
25
ee
26 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
gradual development of the Museum. ‘To Professor Henry American science owes a debt which is but seldom realized and can hardly be exag- gerated. It is difficult for anyone, even with the printed records before him, to form an adequate idea of the conditions under which the Smith- sonian Institution grew to its present stature, nor what unceasing vigi- lance was required of its head to avoid the pitfalls which everywhere beset its path in adolescence. Opinions, emphatic and divergent, were abundant, in and out of Congress, as to the policy and methods deemed desirable for the Institution. Men would have used the fund for a great library, museum of art, or university. The original act by which it was constituted was a compromise, leaving a door open for the advocates of either opinion to modify the policy of the Institution should the time come when any particular view could command a majority in the gov- erning board. Professor Henry was determined that the ‘‘increase and diffusion of knowledge among men’’ in the highest and broadest sense of the words should be the object to be attained, and that nothing local or special should absorb the funds or the energies of the Institution. Such things as could and would be done by other agencies were not to be attempted by the Smithsonian, but rather the things worth doing, which, except for the aid given by the Institution, could not get done at all. ‘Those branches of activity prescribed by the act creating the Instt- tution, but which tended to outgrow a strict subordination and absorb undue proportions of the income, were rigorously pruned and sternly repressed. It seems strange to recall a time when free speech did not exist in the capital of the nation, yet it 1s within my memory when so great was the irritability of the proslavery element in Washington that Professor Henry, with an eye single to the welfare of his beloved Insti- tution, felt it necessary to warn foreign men of science invited to work or lecture here that certain topics must not be touched upon, directly or indirectly. Professor Henry knew that the resources of the Smithsonian could not support a great museum or a great library and still carry out the promotion of science in the wider sense, which was his ideal aim. He wished for a national museum and a national library, but only at national expense. He approved of the far-reaching explorations and collections which the genius of Professor Baird initiated and by untiring labors promoted, but he did not wish the enormous mass of material thus brought together to be a charge upon the slender funds of the Institu- tion. His policy was to distribute to other institutions of learning, museums, and colleges, as soon as worked up, everything except a typical series of the specimens, thus at once promoting research at other points and economizing space and the expenses of preservation. Arrangements were made with naturalists all over the country by which material in their special lines of research was shipped to them as soon as received, to remain indefinitely, until reported upon. The same policy led to placing in the Corcoran Gallery of Art such objects of art spared by the
Memorial Meeting. 237)
great fire of 1865 as that establishment could utilize ; and to the deposit in the Library of Congress of the great collection of scientific books and periodicals, which was rapidly outgrowing all the limits set by his pru- dence. In his determination that nothing should be permitted to divert the progress of the Institution from the lines laid down for it, Professor Henry thought no labor too great, no personal supervision too minute, no just economy too paltry. Who shall say that his lofty purposes and unceasing struggles have not been justified by his success?
Meanwhile Baird’s ambitions and endeavors were leading toward the establishment of a national museum in facc, if not in name. Multitu- dinous expeditions were set on foot for Pacific railway routes, military surveys, the coast survey, the routes for an Isthmian canal, the explora- tion of the Hudson Bay territory, Lower California, and Alaska. From each and all of these a stream of the most precious material for study flowed toward the Smithsonian Institution. The natural sciences all over the world were enriched by the countercurrent of published researches which poured from those Elizabethan towers. A bevy of students, poor in purse, but rich in enthusiasm, in energy and devotion, found shelter there. From time to time, as opportunities came, they sallied forth, one by one, to the ends of the earth, bent on enriching the collection and advancing science, in which they usually succeeded.
How difficult in such a case to hold the balance true! To preserve for study what was needed and yet not to exceed the limits imposed by cir- cumstances. ‘To be loyal and true in spirit, as well as in the letter, to the policy of the chief, and yet to hold securely for the future that which the future would need. Yet this task, so perplexing and so difficult, was successfully performed by Baird. He had for Henry an affectionate loyalty and veneration asstrong in its way as his devotion to biological research, and which supplied a never-failing and most elevating example to the younger men about him.
The establishment of the Fish Commission with its separate income partly available for research somewhat ameliorated the situation. The establishment of a national museum, as urged by Baird and Henry, became a more familiar idea to Congress and the country. With the Centennial Exposition of 1876, came an opportunity of which Baird was not slow to take advantage. He determined that the exhibition made by the United States should bear testimony to what the Museum could do both in the way of material and in its presentation. ‘The Government made a loan of several millions to the Exposition, which no one then supposed would ever be repaid. Members of the appro- priations committee felt quite safe in half jokingly assuring Professor Baird that if the money ever was repaid an appropriation for a National Museum building should not be withheld. The entire staff of the Museum, including several unpaid volunteers, with Goode at their head, gave all their energies for nearly a year to make the Government and
28 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
especially the Museum exhibit a success, feeling that the future of the Museum was really at stake. Individuals all over the country were called upon to assist by advice or material in their special lines. ‘Thousands of letters were written and thousands of exhibits gathered. Here Goode had his first training in the arts of exposition, in which he finally became the acknowledged master. Many were the discussions as to system, selec- tion of exhibits, cases, labels, and methods in general. It was indeed a liberal education to those engaged in the work. No test could have been contrived which would better have revealed the strength or weakness, on certain sides, of all engaged in it. Men of whom much was expected failed utterly. Others developed unexpected capacity.and talent. The result was a glorious success, acknowledged by all beholders.
After a certain time the Government loan was repaid, and at last the unofficial promises of members of Congress were kept. A sum, pitiably small if compared with the money devoted by most civilized nations to housing their national museums, was appropriated, and, by a lucky chance, an unparalleled depression in the iron trade enabled contracts to be made to the great advantage of the Government. A building without any archi- tecturai pretensions, but giving light and floor space at a lower cost than in any other permanent structure of equal size ever erected by the United States, was finally put up, a new organization effected, and at last the National Museum possessed a local habitation anda name. ‘The direction of its activities, under the supervision of Professor Baird, was placed in Goode’s hands, and his career asa Museum administrator officially began.
It may be thought that the preceding remarks have included very little about Goode and a great deal about other matters. Thisis true; but no account of the man and his activities would be adequate which omitted a delineation of the struggles, fears, and hopes of which, in his position, he was the natural heir. A great institution is not created; it is built up. With the mortar of its foundations is mixed the blood and sweat of the builders. Something of the very soul of its architect springs with its pinnacles toward the heavens. ‘The capacity for administration may be inborn, the professional knowledge must be earned. ‘These truths are singularly ignored, even by those who should know better. In fact our people, even those who have much advanced the cause of education, and those who have won repute in the fields of politics or business, have not wholly shaken off the provincial notion that a museum is a sort of toy which an intelligent window-dresser might be competent to manage. The realization of the fact that museum administration is a profession, as arduous as that of medicine or law, seems to be confined almost entirely to those who have actually been devoting their lives toit. That in the case of a national museum, as a sort of general clearing house of national activities in science, and the chief arena of international scientific reciprocity, still wider knowledge of men and their work, a still broader mental horizon, and infinite tact and patience are urgently required, is still less appreciated.
Memorial Meeting. 29
It is true that every administrator must learn and grow with the progress of his work; but that the work should be put into the hands of total inexperience, as is frequently suggestea, is like insisting that all our genealogies should be traced from Adam and Eve.
The relations which Goode bore to the scientific activity of the country and less directly to that of the world are best understood through a sketch of Museum administration in the concrete. We may begin with condi- tions in such an institution itself.
It is hardly true, as I have heard it somewhat broadly stated by one of the uninitiated, that ‘‘scientific men are all cranks,’’ though this estimate is by no means without its supporters. Yet it can not be denied that there is something out of the common and, to the average citizen, peculiar in the mental constitution which leads to the adoption of a profession which offers no pecuniary reward at all adequate to the required exertion ; which, in this country at least, extends little hope of discrimination from quacks and charlatans adept at attracting public notice; in which the modest prizes are few and far between, promotion problematical; where the worker must congratulate himself if he is able to support and educate his family without actual privation, and must find his reward, if at all, in the consciousness of work well done and the esteem of a few contempo- rary toilers. Such a mental constitution, I repeat, does have in it some- thing different from that of the ordinary mind and something which the average man finds difficult to reconcile with his idea of common sense. Only the other day I heard of a conscientious guardian of an orphan with a small competence, who refused to allow the boy to follow his natural bent and become a naturalist, on the ground that it would be a dereliction of duty if the guardian permitted his ward to enter upon a career in which the rewards are so few and financial success so doubtful.
Those in whom the bent is so strong as to defy all obstacles not infre- quently are somewhat one-sided people. ‘They feel, as they ought to feel, that their own specialty is the most important of the many domains of science. Since they have not hesitated at any sacrifice to devote them- selves to it, it is not unnatural that they should feel that from colaborers in science, support, encouragement, and a sufficient allotment from the common fund are justly due. Ina great museum this common fund or income is never sufficient to meet all demands. ‘The director must be more than human who can apportion disappointment without exciting disapproval. Yet in the midst of annual expressions of regret I never heard Goode’s justice or kindly feeling questioned.
It sometimes happens, as a scientist is human, that the weaknesses or faults of our common humanity find a lodgment with him, possibly even to the point where a love of science seems the only thread withholding him from utter shipwreck. The kindly and generous nature of Professor Baird, joined toa certain practical shrewdness, enabled him to utilize and succor, from time to time, such waifs, putting them where the redeeming virtue might exert its wholesome influence and the broken soul might
30 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
feel the comfort, in hours of remorse, that, after all, its life had not been wholly wasted. Baird’s example was not forgotten by his pupil.
Lest engrossment in a specialty breed indifference to progress in com- mon, it is of the highest importance that the leader in a band of workers shall use every opportunity of emphasizing their joint responsibility to science and to the public, for whose entertainment and instruction the museum is supported by public funds. This duty Goode never forgot, and by example and precept he continually stimulated each and every one to his best efforts.
The experiments in methods of preservation and exhibition, by which the best results are reached, are of interest and value to the whole scien- tific community. It often happens that only through a long series of failures, all more or less costly, is success at last attained. Were each museum, private or public, obliged to run the whole gamut of experi- ment, the losses would be irreparable and the cost enormous. In this direction, as did Baird in his time, Goode developed a particular genius, and his successes placed him early in his career in the very front rank, if not at the virtual head, of all Museum experts. ‘The results of this work were placed freely at the disposition of all interested, and nearly all museums in this country and many abroad have materially profited by the skill and ingenuity thus displayed. It is highly probable, so modest was the originator, that few of those whose work is thus assisted have any definite idea of the source from which the facilities came.
Looking beyond the Museum itself and considering its external rela- tions, we find that naturalists and anthropologists all over the country are in the habit of appealing to the Director or staff of the National Museum for scientific information, advice, or needed assistance in all sorts of directions. In many cases the question is not simple, but one requiring the utmost consideration and delicacy.
‘The needs or requests of different institutions or persons are not infre- quently conflicting, and the decision may be far-reaching. The compe- tition between different workers or institutions in the same field is liable, unless treated with great tact, to rouse antagonisms. Small societies sometimes inadvisedly identify themselves with the opinions or theories of some individual member, and if the latter prove contestable the amount of human nature which may be displayed is astonishing. It has happened that such an organization, in a fit of pique, has showered abusive pamphlets over the inhabited universe. Rival candidates for coveted posts resort to the most ingenious methods for securing indorse- ment contrary to the rules of the institution. Occasions arise when advice is sought with seriousness and given with anxiety, as a matter of duty. In short, it is required of the head of the Museum to have a gen- eral knowledge of the character, responsibility, and reliability of all the professional and most of the amateur scientific workers of the country and of the character and interrelations of all the more or less scientific
Memorial Meeting. 31
societies, not only for the use and benefit of the outsiders, but for the safety and protection of the Museum itself. While no one could exceed Professor Baird in the breadth and accuracy of his information on such topics, yet the traditions he handed down and Goode’s own wide knowl- edge of the younger generation gave him satisfactory qualifications of this most necessary and special kind.
Leaving the ostensibly scientific, not the least embarrassing duty the head of the Museum has to perform is the answering of letters from the people at large. Here the variety ranges from the intelligent seeker for an explanation of some observed phenomenon, to the fraudulent scheme of some rascal for securing books or specimens by false pretenses. "The most ignorant are often the most confident in their own explanation of something which has temporarily puzzled them ; nevertheless they seek official sanction and approval. Cranks write letters in blue ink, the nouns filled in with red. So and so announces that the Apollonian Library, upon whose letter head he writes, is desirous of a full set of the publications and, being the only library in a large region round about, should undoubtedly receive them; and signs himself librarian. It is known to the initiated that the signer is himself the Apollonian Library and its only reader. Ill-spelled letters tell of natural curiosities, mar- velous to behold, sometimes for sale, sometimes to be freely donated. It would bea great mistake to suppose that these letters may be treated with scorn, or ignored. It has often happened that the layman in his blindness has stumbled upon something good. At any rate he is one of the great American people whose taxes support the Museum, and is enti- tled to courtesy and illumination if it can be furnished. At all events, it will be clear to you that special knowledge, tact, and kindliness will not be superfluous in the treatment of the daily mass of correspondence.
I have tried to throw a little light on the difficulties and problems our dear friend met and solved so well. JIilustrations might be greatly mul- tiplied did time permit. What has been said, I trust, is enough to show that no ordinary man could have done this work (and much else) and yet have left behind him no antagonisms, no memories of failure, no hint of insufficiency, associated with his name. He is remembered as one never weary of welldoing; who reached the heights, though ever aiming higher; whose example stimulated and whose history will prove a lasting inspiration.
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RESOLUTIONS AND MESSAGES OF SYMPATHY.
On the completion of the reading of the formal addresses, General Orlando B. Willcox, U.S. A., representing the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution of the District of Columbia, offered the following resolutions, which were seconded by Rear-Admiral James A. Greer, U. S. N., representing the Society of the Sons of the Revolution, and adopted by a rising vote:
We, the associates and friends of the late George Brown Goode in the scientific, patriotic, and historical societies of the city of Washington, being met together to commemorate his life and service, do recognize:
That in his death the world has lost a great man of true moral worth, unusual breadth of intellect, profound human sympathy, unswerving loyalty to his duty, and devotion to his family and his friends.
That America has been deprived of a most patriotic, public-spirited, and loyal citizen, American science of its first historian, and American history of an original investigator.
That universal science has lost one of its foremost ichthyologists and a man broadly learned in the entire field of natural history.
That the scientific service of the United States Government, the societies to which he belonged, and all the institutions in America for the promotion of knowledge have lost in him an ever faithful and willing cooperator.
Resolved, That this minute be communicated to the societies of which Doctor Goode was a member and a copy be sent to his family, to whom the persons here assembled extend their sincere sympathy.
RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED IN THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
By the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:
Whereas the assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Doctor G. Brown Goode, died on September 6, 1896,
Resolved, That the Board of Regents wish to here record their sense of the devotion to duty which in the late Doctor Goode came before any consideration of personal advancement, or even before the care of his own health, and of their recognition that his high administrative ability and wide knowledge were devoted unselfishly to the service of the Institution, with results whose value they can not too highly acknowledge; and they desire to express their feeling of the loss that the Institution, the National Museum, and the cause of science has sustained in his untimely death.
Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be suitably engrossed and transmitted to the family of Doctor Goode.
NAT MUS 97, PT 2 33
io)
34 Memoral of George Brown Goode.
By the employees of the National Museum:
Whereas, in the untimely death of Doctor G. Brown Goode the scientific world and the American people have suffered an immeasurable Joss—we, his assistants, collaborators, and friends, knew and esteemed him as an investigator of signal hon- esty and ability, as an earnest and efficient administrator whose willing aid and forbearance endeared him to all, as a man of pure motives and stainless life, and as a faithful friend and mentor—therefore,
Resolved, That in Doctor Goode’s death we have lost a leader and companion whose teachings will always be in our minds and whose memory will forever live in our hearts.
Resolved, That we extend our heartfelt sympathy to the stricken family in this our common sorrow.
RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE OFFICERS OF THE FIELD COLUMBIAN MUSEUM.
At a meeting of the director and curators of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, Illinois, the following preamble and resolutions were adopted:
Whereas, We have learned with great sorrow of the death of the distinguished scholar and scientist, Doctor George Brown Goode, Director of the National Museum; be it therefore, in grateful tribute to his memory,
Resolved, That we recognize, as the world has already recognized, the conspicuous abilities displayed by him in the particular field of science in which he chose to labor, but still more fully we appreciate the fact that in the broader field of museum organ- ization and management, a work which he had reduced to science, he stood without a peer. Not less admirable, as a feature of his career, is the enviable position always held by him as an adviser and helper among his associates, scientific, official, and personal. His strong, helpful hand was ever extended.
Resolved, That we mourn his loss not only on account of these attainments and qualities, but also as a man of broad sympathies and tender heart, upright cheerful character, and honest, virtuous life.
Resolved, That our sincere sympathies are hereby extended to the members of his bereaved family in the hour of their affliction, and that a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to them in token thereof.
185 do Wo Seba Director. Wan. H. HOLMES, Curator, Department of Anthropology. C. F. MILLSPAUGH, Curator, Department of Botany. O. C. FARRINGTON, Curator, Department of Geology. H. W. NICHOLS, Curator, Department of E:conomic Geology. CHARLES B. Cory, Curator, Department of Ornithology. S. A. SIMMS, Assistant Curator, in Charge of Industrial Arts. E. L. BURCHARD, Recorder and Librarian.
Memorial Meeting. 35
RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.
At a meeting of the biological section of the New York Academy of Sciences held October 12, 1896, the following resolution, introduced by Professor Henry F. Osborn and seconded by Mr. William T. Hornaday, was unanimously adopted by a rising vote:
Resolved, That the members of the biological section of the New York Academy of Sciences desire to express their deep sense of loss in the death of Professor G. Brown Goode, of the United States National Museum. In common with all naturalists in this country, we have admired his intelligent and highly successful administration of the National Museum, as well as his prompt and ready response to the requests and needs of similar institutions throughout the country.
In face of the arduous and exacting duties of his directorship, he has held a lead- ing position among American zoologists, and we are indebted to him for a series of invaluable investigations, especially upon the fishes.
Those of us who had the good fortune to know Professor Goode personally, recall his singular charm of character, his genial interest in the work of others, his true scientific spirit. We have thus lost one of our ablest fellow-workers and one of the truest and best of men.
JOHN G. CuRTIS, Chairman. CHARLES L,. Briston, Secretary.
CIRCULAR ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES.
UNITED STATES COMMISSION OF FISH AND FISHERIES,
Washington, D. C., September 8, 1896. [Circular Order No. 139. ]
It becomes my painful duty to announce to the employees of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries the death in this city, on the 6th instant, of Doctor George Brown Goode, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and at one time United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. Although his official con- nection, strictly speaking, has always been with the former establishment, Doctor Goode is best known for his researches and publications on the fishes and fisheries of the United States, on which subjects he came to be recognized as the leading authority. He first joined in the investigations of the Fish Commission on the Atlantic coast in 1872 as a volunteer, and in that capacity continued to participate in its scientific work up to the time of Professor Baird’s death in 1887. He was appointed to succeed the latter as Fish Commissioner, but relinquished that position after a few months, upon the passage of the act giving it an independent status. Doctor Goode had charge of the Fishery Division of the Tenth Census, and was also the United States Commissioner to the Fishery Expositions at Berlin and London. He has been one of the most fruitful and valued contributors to the reports and bul- letins of the Fish Commission, and in his death the fishing interests of the country have sustained a severe loss.
J. J. BRicE, Commissioner.
EXTRACTS FROM PROCEEDINGS OF ASSOCIATIONS.
[From a report of the proceedings of the Seventh Annual General Meeting of the Museumis Asso- ciation held in Glasgow July 21 to 25, 1896. ]
At the meeting of the Association held in Newcastle last year was read a contribu- tion from Doctor G. Brown Goode on The principles of Museum Administration ; and afterwards the author sent a reprint of the paper to each member of the Associa-
36 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
tion. To most members he was already known by his contributions to museum literature in the Reports of the National Museum of the United States, and other pub- lications; but a more personal feeling of intimacy was engendered by the direct communication of his thoughts to the Association at Newcastle. It was therefore with a feeling of the deepest regret the news of his untimely death was received. Doctor Goode died in Washington on 6th of September at the age of forty-five years. His early death is a great loss, not only to the United States Museum, but to museums in general, for he took a deep and active interest in all things affecting their development and well-being.
[From the proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Convention, American Institute of Architects, 1896. ]
Of the corresponding members the institute loses Professor G. Brown Goode, the well-known Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Curator of the National Museum, who brought out of a chaos of inaccessible treasures the orderly, well-arranged, enjoyable, and instructive collection which makes the Smithsonian Institution take rank with the finest museums in the world.
MESSAGES OF SYMPATHY.
From among a large number of letters received since the death of Mr. Goode, appreciating his great services and offering consolation at his death, the following few extracts are made.
Sir William H. Flower, director of the British Museum, said:
I should like to take part in any tribute to the memory of a man I admired so much and was in such sympathy with as Brown Goode.
Professor Enrico H. Giglioli, of Florence, on October 3, 1896, spoke of Mr. Goode as one of the men he loved and esteemed most:
I feel so crushed [he said] by this terrible blow that I hardly know what I am writing. . . . Hewasso full of energy and work it is hard to believe that he is now no more. ‘To youallat the National Museum the loss must be immense, but to many abroad it is a great and much felt sorrow. To science in America not alone, but in the civilized world, his loss is indeed irreparable and will be felt for years.
The Honorable William Wirt Henry, of the Virginia Historical Society, wrote:
It is a source of great satisfaction to me that I knew Doctor Goode personally and was privileged to be associated with him in his work in the patriotic and historical societies with which he was connected. No one could know him without being impressed with his learning and modesty and the sterling qualities of the man. I feel that his death is a loss which will be felt in every path in which he walked, and will be mourned by every votary of science.
M. Henri de Varigny, of Paris, wrote to Secretary Langley:
I have received the card which notified [me of] the sad news of the death of that excellent and most distinguished man, G. Brown Goode. I was already acquainted with the fact, and had published a few lines of obituary notice in the Revue Scien- tifique, but I have not adequately expressed the feeling of true sorrow I experience when I remember that he is no more, and that his writing, activity, and energetic kindness have ceased to be. He was very kind and obliging to me, and I shall keep a warm remembrance of him. Your loss is a great one.
Memorval Meeting. ae
Mr. Valdemar Knudsen, of Honolulu, Hawaii, wrote:
The card announcing the death of George Brown Goode, LL. D., has just been received, and my full sympathy for his loss to your institution and to mankind in general is hereby humbly tendered.
Doctor Karl Mobius, of Berlin, wrote, under date of January 26, 1897:
The unexpected death of Mr. George Brown Goode has deeply affected me. We were in agreeable communication, to the advantage of our museums. We have lost in him a distinguished promoter of our scientific efforts.
Professor Alfonso L. Herrera, of the National Museum in Mexico, wrote:
I have received the notice of the lamented death of George Brown Goode, LL. D., and after thanking you for this mark of attention, I offer my most sincere condo- lence, and on my part I deplore the loss sustained by science, the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and all persons who, like myself, had the good fortune to receive consideration from the deceased. I shall never forget his kindness and courtesy.
Mr. John Crawford, of Managua, Nicaragua, wrote:
On my return here from an excursion among the mountains I learned with much surprise and great regret of the death of Doctor G. Brown Goode. On many occa- sions he was very patient and kind to me, and no doubt was so to many other natu- ralists who, like myself, are far from museums and the advantages of daily conferring with and receiving instruction from scientists. I esteemed him highly, and had hoped that he would live many years in good health, and in physical and mental vigor continue and enjoy his useful life.
Mr. Julius Neumann, of the Chinese Custom Service, Shasi, China, on March 15, 1897, wrote:
It was with extreme regret that I have just received your card of the 16th of November last announcing the death of Professor G. Brown Goode, and I write this note to condole with you on the loss your great Institution and science at large have to deplore.
I had the pleasure of meeting the deceased first in London in 1883, and then in the following year in New Orleans, and ever since we had kept up friendly relations. I shall always fondly cherish his memory.
The Honorable John Boyd Thacher, of Albany, New York, wrote:
My personal knowledge of Professor Brown Goode began in 1890, when he gave his advice and counsel to the World’s Columbian Commission in classifying the various objects into proper departments for exhibition, and more particularly in advising and establishing an adequate method in passing judgment upon the exhibits. In these matters I can testify to his ability and consummate skill. It was purely voluntary service he rendered, and I at once formed—and have since maintained—a profound sense of his goodness to those who were officially charged with work for which he knew we were most imperfectly equipped, and to whom he gave not only suggestions but detailed and elaborate and finished plans. It is the glory of the modern scientist and scholar that he subordinates himself to the accomplishment of public work. Our friend never asked to be identified personally with the accom- plished thing. It was enough for him to know that some good was done and not that the world should know that it was done by him. The utter absence of selfish- ness in any life is worthy of recording in brass or in marble or in formulated words.
38 Memorial of George Brown Gooae.
Doctor Alfred Dugés, of Guanajuato, Mexico, expressed his profound regrets.
Doctor Leon Vaillant, professor of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, said that the ichthyological world has experienced a great loss.
Doctor J. B. de Lacerda, director of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, and Baron C. R. Osten-Sacken, tendered their sympathy.
Doctor H. von Ihering, of San Paulo, Brazil, spoke of the loss the National Museum suffered in its administrative and scientific interests.
Doctor R. Schone, director-general of the Royal Museums in Berlin, expressed his sincere regret at the death of this worthy scholar and extends his sympathy.
Professor Pietro Pavesi, director of the Zoological Museum of the Uni- versity of Pavia, offered his condolence. A similar message was received from the Museum Francisco-Carolinum in Linz.
" 7 ; MEMOIR OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE, 1851-1806. 6 BY ]
SAMUEL PIERPONYT LANGLEY,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
39
a
MEMOIk OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE, 1851-1896.
By SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
George Brown Goode was born at New Albany, Indiana, on February 13, 1851, and died at his home in Washington on September 6, 1896, after a life of forty-five years, than which few human lives have ever been better filled.
In those years he won the warm affection of a wide circle of friends and the trust and confidence of a multitude of subordinates in the position to which his own abilities had carried him. He interested himself and interested others in ever-widening circles of research, and such varied work that it seemed to those who knew what he was doing, incompre- hensible that one man could accomplish so much in one single life; and when this came to an end, its cessation was like the loss of a part of them- selves to those who knew him best, by whom he is remembered with an affection which men rarely gain from one another.
He was the son of Francis Collier Goode and Sarah Woodruff Crane. The Goode family trace their ancestry in this country to John Goode, of Whitby, who settled in Virginia prior to 1661.”
While still settled in Virginia, many members of the Goode family
went to the South and West to do pioneer work in building up villages and towns on what was then the outskirt of civilization. ‘ Doctor Goode’s father, Francis Collier Goode, was born in Waynes- ville, Ohio, and was a merchant in Ohio and Indiana. In 1857 he retired from business, removing to Amenia, New York; subsequently to Mid- dletown, Connecticut, and later to Arlington, Florida, and occasionally spent winters in the Bermudas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington City.
‘Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 21, 1897.
2 The history of this family has been carefully traced by Doctor Goode in Virginia Cousins: A Study of the Ancestry and Posterity of John Goode, of Whitby, a Vir- ginia Colonist of the Seventeenth Century, with notes upon related families, a key to southern genealogy and a history of the English surname Gode, Goad, Goode, or Good from 1148 to 1887, by G. Brown Goode, with a preface by R. A. Brock, Secre- tary of the Virginia and Southern Historical Societies. Richmond, Virginia, J. W. Randolph & English, MDCCCLXXXVII.
41
42 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
His mother, Sarah Woodruff Crane, was a descendant of Jasper Crane, who came to New England during the first ten years of the first settle- ment, and was one of the pioneers of Newark, New Jersey.
Doctor Goode was thus of sturdy American parentage on both sides, numbering among his ancestors the founders of the Virginia, Massachu- setts, Connecticut, and New Jersey colonies. ‘The family was singularly free from foreign mixture, not 1o per cent of the marriages among the numerous descendants having been with persons whose ancestors came to America later than 1725.
He passed his early childhood in Cincinnati and his later childhood and early youth in Amenia, New York, where he was prepared for col- lege by private tutors. His father was a man of studious habits and not devoid of an interest in science. He had assembled in his library a set of the Smithsonian Reports, which young Goode read as a boy. It was through these volumes that he was first attracted to science and to the Smithsonian Institution, his boyish ambition being to become con- nected with it and to study under Professor Baird.
He entered Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, in 1866, and was graduated in 1870. Although scarcely more than fifteen when he entered college and a little over nineteen years of age at the time of his graduation, being the youngest member of the class, his work in the studies of the natural history group was so satisfactory as to attract the favorable notice of histeachers. ‘The years at Middletown foreshadowed the strong love for nature, the museum interest, ability in classification, and even the literary talent, which were the distinguishing features of all Doctor Goode’s later career.
When he went to college, his father removed to Middletown and became a neighbor to Orange Judd, the pioneer of agricultural journalism in this country and closely identified with the advancement of scienttfic agricul- ture. ‘There sprang up between the daughter of Mr. Judd and young Goode a friendship which ripened into love and resulted in their marriage, of which I speak here because Doctor Goode himself felt that the friendship with Mr. Judd, thus brought about through his daughter, had the largest share in determining his future career. The two young people had similar tastes in natural history and outdoor life. As early as 1869 Doctor Goode commenced to record in the College Argus and the College Review his outdoor rambles. He was at this time a young man of stout frame and vigorous health, engaging in all of the athletic sports known to'college students of that day.
In 1870he entered Harvard University as a post-graduate student under Professor Louis Agassiz, whose genial influence he glowingly describes in his youthful letters.
Mr. Judd had presented to Wesleyan University a building known as the Orange Judd Hall of Natural Science. This building wasin progress
! Virginia Cousins, p. xiv.
Memoir of George Brown Goode. ge
of erection during Mr. Goode’s student years and was dedicated in the commencement week of 1871.
Before that time [says Professor Rice] the natural history collections of Wesleyan University were scattered in several buildings, very imperfectly labeled and arranged, and most inaccessible to students or visitors. The spacious rooms in Judd Hall first
gave the opportunity to arrange and display these collections in such manner as to give them the dignity of a museum.
The work which Doctor Goode had done while a student under Pro- fessor Agassiz caused an invitation to be extended to him to undertake the arrangement of this collection, and in.1871, when but a little over twenty, he was given the title of Curator of the Museum, and undertook the installation of the collections. It was in this work that he ‘‘first showed that genius for museum administration which he was destined afterwards to display in the larger field.’’ He retained his official con- nection with Middletown until 1877, although the greater part of these years was spent either in Washington or in the field. During a portion of this time, although absent from Middletown, he received a salary from Wesleyan University, and was allowed in exchange to send to the Museum duplicates of natural history specimens in the Smithsonian Institution, as well as the duplicates of the collections which he made. He always retained a strong feeling of affection for his alma mater, and founded the Goode prize, intended to stimulate an interest in biologic studies. He was one of the editors of the 1873 and 1883 editions of the Alumni Record of Wesleyan University, and received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from that institution in 1893.
Doctor Goode’s mother died in his infancy, and he found in his father’s second wife an affectionate and sympathetic helper, who was a strong believer in the possibility of his future scientific career. ‘To her he owed his introduction to Professor Baird, whom he first saw at Eastport, Maine, in 1872, and this meeting was the turning point of his professional life. Through it he not only got the larger opportunities for natural history work afforded by the Fish Commission and the Smithsonian Institution, but Professor Baird singled him out almost from the first as his chief pupil, his intimate friend, his confidential adviser, and his assistant in all the natural history work in which he was engaged. ‘The splendid advantages which Professor Baird accorded his young friend were repaid by an intense devotion.
Mr. Goode said once that he could lay down his life for such a man, and indeed he almost did so, for his originally robust health was impaired by this devotion to Professor Baird’s service, particularly at the Centen- nial Exposition of 1876, which he left invalided, and the effects of his overwork in which left him a weaker man through his after life. "The death of Professor Baird in 1887 affected him so deeply that it was not until 1895 that he was once heard to say that he had but just recovered from the loss.
44 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
He became in 1872 a volunteer in the United States Fish Commission, the year after the organization of that Bureau, and he continued this work, making collections in 1872 at Eastport, Maine, in 1873 in Casco Bay, and in 1874 at Noank, on Long Island Sound. The years from 1872 to 1878 show collections of fishes made by him at the points named, as well as in Bermuda, Florida, Connecticut, and other places. Nearly twenty papers and articles relating to the Fish Commission and to fish- eries appeared from his pen during the first four years of this voluntary association with the Fish Commission. He was interested not only in the scientific side of ichthyological work, but devoted great attention to the economic side. It was in 1877 that he found his first specimen of a deep-sea fish and laid the foundation of the studies which culminated in the splendid memoir on Oceanic Ichthyology by himself and Doctor Bean. During these years with Professor Baird he became experienced in all the work of the Fish Commission, and upon his death was appointed Commissioner of Fisheries by the President. The position up to this time had been an honorary one, but Mr. Goode informed President Cleveland that the work had grown to such an extent that it was not possible for any person who was actively engaged in the Smithsonian Institution or elsewhere to continue it. President Cleveland urged him several times to permanently accept the position of Commissioner of Fish- eries, and the Committee on Appropriations of Congress had provided a salary which was larger than the one which Mr. Goode was receiving or ever did receive, but he resolutely declined, asserting that his life’s ambi- tion had been to become associated with the Smithsonian Institution; that his heart was in the Museum, and that he could not give it up. As related to his work in the Fish Commission, the facts may be mentioned that in 1877 he was employed by the Department of State on statistical work in connection with the Halifax Commission, and in 1879 and 1880 he was in charge of the Fisheries Division of the Tenth Census. His administrative abilities were strongly brought out in the organization of this work. Professor Henry F. Osborn describes his method as follows:
Special agents were sent out, to every part of the coast and to the Great Lakes, to gather information. Goode worked at it himself on Cape Cod, and manifested the same enthusiasm as in every other piece of work he took up. He interested himself in getting together a collection representing the methods of the fisheries and the habits of the fishermen. Neglecting neither the most trivial nor important objects, branching out into every collateral matter, he showed his grasp both of principles and of details.
He was United States commissioner to the Internationale Fischerei Ausstellung in 1880 at Berlin and to the International Fisheries Exposi- tion held at London in 1883. From circular order No. 139, issued by Commander J. J. Brice, United States Commissioner of Fish and Fish- eries, I extract the following sentences:
Doctor Goode is best known for his researches and publications on the fishes and fisheries of the United States, on which subjects he came to be recognized as the
Memotr of George Brown Goode. 45
leading authority. . . . He has been one of the most fruitful and valued con- tributors to the reports and bulletins of the Fish Commission, and in his death the fishing interests of the country have sustained a severe loss.
As I have before said, his connection with the Smithsonian Institution followed shortly after the acquaintance with Professor Baird, who invited him to spend the winter of 1873 in Washington for the purpose of arrang- ing the ichthyological specimens and with the understanding that as a payment for this service he was to be allowed to select duplicates for the museum at Middletown. At that time he had the title of Assistant Cura- tor, which was later changed to Curator, and although the relations to Middletown continued, the ties with the Institution were becoming stronger and stronger. He now met Professor Henry for the first time, and became one of the small coterie of Smithsonian men who at that time lived in the Smithsonian building and formed a part of the hospitable household which Professor Henry maintained. In these early days the staff was an extremely small one, being only thirteen persons, including honorary collaborators and subordinates. Doctor Goode threw himself into this work with uncalculating devotion. Professor Baird’s duties were becom- ing more and more numerous, and after he became Secretary of the Insti- tution Doctor Goode took the Museum work upon his willing shoulders. In 1881, when the new Museum building was completed and the United States National Museum really organized, Mr. Goode, then thirty years of age, was made Assistant Director. In that year he prepared a circular, known as Circular No. 1 of the National Museum, which set forth a scheme of administration for the Museum so comprehensive in its scope, so exact in its details, so practical in its ideas that it is with but few modifications still the guide for the Museum staff. On January 12, 1887, Professor Baird, whose health was then failing, appointed Mr. Goode as Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in charge of the National Museum, and from that time until his death he had the fullest charge of the entire administration of the Museum.
It is hard to say whether Mr. Goode was best known as a museum director or a naturalist. I, of course, had more occasion to see his work from the administrative side. It would be impossible to understand his success in this field without thinking of the character of the man, and here I may repeat what I have said elsewhere, that if there was one quality more than another which formed the basis of his character it was sincerity—a sincerity which was the ground of a trust and confidence such as could be instinctively given even from the first only to an absolutely loyal and truthful nature.
I do not know whether a power of reading character is more intuitive or acquired, but at any rate without it men may be governed, but not in harmony, and must be driven rather than led. Doctor Goode was in this sense a leader, quite apart from his scientific competence. Every member of the force he controlled, not only among his scientific asso-
46 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
ciates, but down to the humblest employees of the Museum, was an indi- vidual to him, with traits of character which were his own and not another’s, and which were recognized in all dealings, and in this I think he was peculiar, for I have known no man who seemed to possess this sympathetic insight in such a degree, and certainly it was one of the sources of his strength.
I shall have given, however, a wrong idea of him if I leave anyone under the impression that this sympathy led to weakness of rule. He knew how to say ‘‘no,’’ and said it as often as any other, and would rep- rehend, where occasion called, in terms the plainest and most uncompro- mising a man could use, speaking so when he thought it necessary, even to those whose association was voluntary, but who somehow were not alienated as they would have been by such censure from another. ‘‘He often refused me what I most wanted,’’ said one of his staff to me; ‘‘ but I never went to sleep without having in my own mind forgiven him.’’
I have spoken of some of the moral qualities which made all rely upon him and which were the foundation of his ability to deal with men. To them was joined that scientific knowledge without which he could not have been a museum administrator; but even with this knowledge he could not have been what he was, except from the fact that he loved the Museum and its administration above every other pursuit, even, I think, above his own special branch of biological science. He was perhaps a man of the widest interests I have ever known, so that whatever he was speaking of at any moment seemed to be the thing he knew best. It was often hard to say, then, what love predominated; but I think that he had, on the whole, no pleasure greater than that in his Museum administration, and that, apart from his family interests and joys, this was the deepest love of all. He refused advantageous offers to leave it, though I ought to gratefully add here, that his knowledge of my reliance upon him and his unselfish desire to aid me were also among his deter- mining motives in remaining. They were natural ones in such a man.
What were the results of this devotion may be comprehensively seén in the statement that in the year in which he was first enrolled among the officers of the Museum, the entries of collections numbered less than 200,000, and the staff, including honorary collaborators and all subordi- nates, thirteen persons, and by comparing these early conditions with what they became under his subsequent management.
Professor Baird at the first was an active manager, but from the time that he became Secretary of the Institution he devolved more and more of the Museum duties on Doctor Goode, who for nine years preceding his death was practically in entire charge of it. It is strictly within the truth, then, to say that the changes which have taken place in the Museum in that time are more his work than any other man’s, and when we find that the number of persons employed has grown from thirteen to over two hundred, and the number of specimens from 200,000 to over 3,000,000,
~
Memoir of George Brown Goode. 47
and consider that what the Museum now is, its scheme and arrangement, with almost all which make it distinctive, are chiefly Doctor Goode’s, we have some of the evidence of his administrative capacity. He was fitted to rule and administer both men and things, and the Museum under his management was, as some one has called it, ‘‘ A house full of ideas and a nursery of living thought.’’
His success of administration [says Professor Osborn] also came partly from an instinctive knowledge of human nature. . . . He sought out the often latent best qualitjes of the men around him and developed them. When things were out of joint and did not move his way, he waited with infinite patience for the slow opera- tion of time and common sense to set them right. He was singularly considerate of opinion, . . . fertile of original ideasand suggestions, full of invention and of new expedients, studying the best models at home and abroad, but never bound by any traditions of system or of classification. . . . To all his work also he brought a refined artistic taste, shown in his methods of printing and labeling, as well as in his encouragement of the artistic, and, therefore, the truthful and realistic develop- ment of taxidermy in the arrangement of natural groups of animals. To crown all, like Baird, he entered into the largest conception of the wide-reaching responsibili- ties of his office under the Government, fully realizing that he was not at the head of a university or of a metropolitan museum, but of the Museum of a great nation. Every reasonable request from another institution met a prompt response. : Not the advancement of Washington science, but of American science, was his dominating idea.
There was no subject in connection with the administration of the Museum to which he did not at some time or other give his personal attention. He had a quick eye for color and for form, understood the art of decorating and case building, and had besides a special knowledge of subjects so widely remote from his own biologic interests that it isa question whether a new species or a new musical instrument gave him the greater pleasure. So fully could I rely on his judgment in all things, that even in matters not connected with the Museum I frequently sought the benefit of his advice, and this was sure to be sound, whether it related to the typography or paper of a new volume of the publications, or to some weighty question of policy. It is difficult to single out from among the manifold matters relating to the Institution proper which were con- fided to him one single thing. I can not, however, but recall the fact that he seemed to me, both because of the soundness of his judgment and the wide domain of science with which he was acquainted, the fittest person to place in charge of the Hodgkins award made two years ago. ‘To this entire work, from the time of Mr. Hodgkins’s gift down to the closing of the award, Mr. Goode gave unremitting and zealous attention, having served as chairman both of the preliminary committee and the committee on award.
The field of natural history, of antiquities, of art, of books, is so vast that a mere assemblage of objects, of books, of prints, of engravings, is not in itself significant. Collecting is an art which many essay but few attain. Mr. Goode was eminently a collector. As early as 1872 we find
48 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
him collecting the fishes of the Bermudas, which he worked up in a cata- logue, giving in each case, in addition to characteristics previously noted, descriptions of the colors of the fishes while living, notes on the size and proportions, observations of habits, hints in reference to the origin and meaning of their popular names, and notes upon modes of capture of economic value. The same careful methods of collection he followed in the subsequent expeditions which he undertook in the field. It was not alone in natural history, however, that this talent for collecting displayed itself. Every possible sort of specimen or information which was at hand he collected. He would bring back from every exposition which he attended methodical collections, frequently of materials overlooked by others. Every visit to a foreign country resulted in the bringing back of a collection, not of miscellaneous objects, but of a series which could themselves be placed on exhibition. ‘These might be musical instru- ments, ecclesiastical art, early printed books, medals, or ivories, and the same taste and discrimination and good judgment were displayed in their selection. He collected, however, not only objects, but also words and ideas. From the assembling of the common names of plants and animals in America there grew a large collection of Americanisms, probably larger than any single collection published. Portraits of scientific men, portraits of Washington and Jefferson, autographs, Confederate imprints, Ameri- cana, American scientific text-books—these are but a few of the fields in which Doctor Goode collected.
He was a naturalist in the broadest sense of that word, following in the footsteps of Agassiz and Baird.
He had [says Doctor Gill] acquaintance with several classes of the animal king- dom, and especially with the vertebrates. He even published several minor contri- butions on herpetology, the voices of crustaceans, and other subjects. . . . The flowering plants also enlisted much of his attention, and his excursions into the fields and woods were enlivened by a knowledge of the objects he met with.
The designation naturalist [says Professor Osborn] was one which Goode richly earned and which he held most dear, and our deep sorrow is that his activity as nat- uralist extended only over a quarter of acentury. . . . Asa naturalist Goode did not close any of the windows opening out into nature. His breadth of spirit in public affairs displayed itself equally in his methods of field and sea work and in the variety of his observations and writings. While fishes became his chief interest, he knew all the Eastern species of birds after identifying and arranging the collection in his college museum. He loved plants, and in the later years of his life took great pleasure in the culture of the old-fashioned garden around his house. . . . Many of his briefer papers deal directly with the biological problems which attracted his interest, especially among reptiles and fishes, touching such questions as migration, coloring, albinism, mimicry, parasitism, feeding and breeding habits, the relation of forest protection to the protection of fishes.
Perhaps no one can be a ‘‘naturalist’’ in the larger sense without being directly a lover of Nature and of all natural sights and sounds. One of his family says:
He taught us all the forest trees, their fruits and flowers in season, and to know them when bare of leaves by their shapes; all the wayside shrubs, and even the
Memotr of George Brown Goode. 49
flowers of the weeds; all the wild birds and their notes, and the insects. His ideal of an old age was to have a little place of his own in a mild climate, surrounded by his books for rainy days, and friends who cared for plain living and high thinking, with a chance to help someone poorer than he.
He was a loving and quick observer, and in these simple, natural joys, his studies were his recreations, and were closely connected with his literary pursuits.
He was of course first and foremost an ichthyologist, and this through no lack of sympathy with the larger field, but because of the recognition of the fact that the larger field could not be successfully covered by one man.
His adherence to this subject as a specialty was undoubtedly deter- mined by his long and intimate connection with the Fish Commission during the period of greatest advancement in methods of deep-sea explo- ration, the rich collections of fishes derived from that source being placed at his command. ‘The novelties of structure and environment presented by this material, ever increasing as the work progressed, proved an attraction too strong to be resisted, even in the face of his varied official duties, and caused him to become distinctively a student of the marine forms.
His observations were not confined to any single branch of the subject, but were given the widest latitude that his time permitted. He was the discoverer of many new and strange species and an acknowledged authority on classification; but he took perhaps the greatest interest in questions regarding the geographical and bathymetrical distribution of fishes, a field in which his opportunities for investigation had been unexcelled. The color of fishes had also been a favorite study with him, and he had paid attention to many points in their morphology and in the functions of special organs. He was especially well versed in the literature of ichthyology from the earliest times, and after Professor Baird, was the most eminent exponent in this country of the benefits to be secured to the practical fisheries through the application of scientific teachings.
Doctor Gill, in reviewing his scientific career, said:
A Catalogue of the Fishes of the Bermudas,' published in 1876, furnished addi- tional evidence of knowledge of the literature of his subject and ability to use it to advantage in the discussion of mooted questions, and it also evinced his power of observation.
In the same year, 1876, appeared another work which, to a still greater degree, rendered manifest those same mental characteristics. The work was only a cata- logue, but perhaps from no other publication can some intellectual qualities be so readily and correctly gauged by a competent judge as an elaborate catalogue. Powers of analysis and synthesis, and the ability to weigh the relative values of the material at hand, may make a ‘‘mere catalogue’’ a valuable epitome of a collection and of a science. Such a production was the Classification of the Collection to illustrate the
United States National Museum. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1876 (8°, pp. (2) 1-82, Bulletin United States National Museum, No. 5).
NAT MUS 97, PT 2 4
50 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
Animal Resources of the United States,‘ a work of 126 pages; three years later this catalogue served as the basis for and was elaborated and expanded into a large Cata- logue of the Collection to illustrate the Animal Resources and the Fisheries of the United States,? a volume of 351 pages. These catalogues were for the tentative and adopted arrangement of material exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Fish Commission at the International Exhibition, 1876.
It was the ability that was manifested in these catalogues and the work incidental to their preparation that especially arrested the attention of Professor Baird and marked the author as one well adapted for the direction of a great museum. For signal success in such direction special qualifications are requisite. Only some of them are a mind well trained in analytical as well as synthetic methods, an artistic sense, critical ability, and multifarious knowledge, but above all the knowledge of men and how to deal with them. Perhaps no one has ever combined in more har- monious proportions, such qualifications than G. Brown Goode. In him the National Museum of the United States and the world at large have lost one of the greatest of museum administrators.
As a naturalist, the attention of Doctor Goode was especially directed to and even concentrated on the fishes. His memoirs, contributed mostly to the Proceedings of the United States National Museum, were numerous and chiefly descriptive of new species. (For many of these he had, as a collaborator Doctor Tarleton Bean, then the curator of fishes of the United States National Museum.) Some of the memoirs, however, dealt with special groups, as the Menhaden (1879), Ostraciontidze (1880), Carangidze (1881), the Swordfishes (1881), and the Kel (1882). His monograph of the Menhaden (4revoortia tyrannus) contributed originally to the Report of the United States Commissioner of Fisheries} and then published as a separate work 4— a large volume of nearly 550 pages and with 30 plates—is a model of critical treat- ment of information collected from all quarters. But his most important contribu- tions were published as official Government reports and were the results of investiga- tions especially undertaken for such reports. Especially noteworthy were the volumes comprising the results of the census of 1880.
The 1880 census was planned and carried out on an unusual scale. For the fish- eries the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries cooperated and Doctor Goode had general charge of the entire work. The assistants and special agents
‘International Exhibition, 1876. Board in behalf of United States Executive Departments. Classification of the Collection to illustrate the Animal Resources of the United States. A list of substances derived from the animal kingdom, with synopsis of the useful and injurious animals and a classification of the methods of capture and utilization. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1876. (8° pp. 126, a Second edition with supplemcntary title as Bulletin No. 6, United States National Museum).
*International Exhibition, 1876. Catalogue of the Collection to illustrate the Animal Resources and the Fisheries of the United States, exhibited at Philadelphia in 1876 by the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Fish Commission, and forming a part of the United States National Museum. © Washington: Government Printing Office. 1879. (8°, pp. 351. (1)—Bulletin United States National Museum, No. 14).
3The Natural and Economical History of the American Menhaden. In Report United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, Part v, 1879, Appendix A, pp. I-529, pls. I-xxx1 (xxx canceled), pp. 194-267 by Professor W. O. Atwater.
‘American Fisheries. A History of the Menhaden by G. Brown Goode, with an account of the Agricultural Uses of Fish by W. O. Atwater. .-. . And an intro- duction, bringing the subject down to date. Thirty plates. New York: Orange Judd Company, 1880, (8° pp. x (i), II-XII, 1-529 (1); 31 pls., pl. 30 canceled),
Memotr of George Brown Goode. 51
were consequently selected with judgment and the results were very valuable. The huge mass of statistics was digested and condensed in seven large quarto volumes representing five sections separately devoted to special branches of the subject.*
Doctor Goode’s cares were mainly concentrated on the first section, treating of the Natural History of Aquatic Animals, which was discussed in over 900 pages of text and illustrated by 277 plates. This work was by far the most complete survey of the economical fishes of the country that had ever appeared and has since been the most prized; it led to another,
After the appearance of the census volumes, Doctor Goode was urged to prepare a work for popular use. His consent to do so was followed by a volume, entitled American Fishes, A Popular Treatise upon the Game and Food Fishes of North America,? published by the Standard Book Company of New York. Inasmuch as none of the previous popular works on the American fishes had emanated from men of scientific eminence, it scarcely need be added that the new work had no rival in the field, so far as accurate information and details of habits were involved.
A short time previously Doctor Goode had also prepared the text to accompany a series of twenty large folio colored portraits by an eminent artist, Mr. S. A. Kil- bourne, of the principal Game Fishes of the United States.3
Never had investigations of the deep sea been conducted with such assiduity and skill as during the last two decades. The chief honors of the explorations were carried off by the British and American governments. As the fishes obtained by the vessels of the United States Fish Commission were brought in, they were examined by Doctor Goode (generally in company with Doctor Bean) and duly described. At length Doctors Goode and Bean combined together data respecting all the known forms occurring in the abysmal depths of the ocean and also those of the open sea, and published a résumé of the entire subject in two large volumes entitled Oceanic Ichthyology.
This was a fitting crown to the work on which they had been engaged so long and the actual publication only preceded Doctor Goode’s death by a few weeks.
But the published volumes did not represent all the work of Doctor Goode on the abyssalian fishes. He had almost completed an elaborate memoir on the distribu-
t The Fisheries and Fishery Industry of the United States. Prepared through the cooperation of the Commissioner of Fisheries and the Superintendent of the Tenth Census. By George Brown Goode, Assistant Director of the United States National Museum, and a staff of associates. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884 (-1887, 5 sections in 7 volumes). Section I, Natural History of Aquatic Animals, was mainly prepared by Doctor Goode.
2American Fishes. A Popular Treatise upon the Game and Food Fishes of North America, with especial reference to habits and methods of capture,. By G. Brown Goode. With numerous illustrations. New York; Standard Book Company. 1888. (8°, xvi -+ 496 pp., colored frontispiece. )
3Game Fishes of the United States. ByS. A. Kilbourne. Text by G. Brown Goode. New York: Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1879-1881. (Folio, 46 pp., 20 plates and map.—published in ten parts, each with 2 plates, lithographs in water color, and four page folio of text.)
4Smithsonian Institution. United States National Museum. Special Bulletin. Oceanic Ichthyology. A Treatise on the Deep-sea and Pelagic Fishes of the World, based chiefly upon the collections made by the steamers Blake, Albatross, and Fish Hawk in the Northwestern Atlantic, with an atlas containing 417 figures, by George Brown Goode, Ph. D., Ll. D., and Tarleton H. Bean, M. D.,M.S. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1895. 2vols., 4°; I, xxxv +- 26%, 553 pp.; II, xxiii + 26* pp., 123 pls.
52 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
tion of those fishes, and, contrary to the conclusions of former laborers in the same field, had recognized for them a number of different faunal areas. It is to be hoped that this may yet be given to the world.
Morphological and descriptive ichthyology were not cultivated to the exclusion of what is regarded as more practical features. In connection with his official duties as an officer of the United States Fish Commission he studied the subject of pisciculture in all its details. Among his many contributions to the subject are one on The First Decade of the United States Commission, its plan of work and accom- plished results, scientific and economical (1880), another treating of the Epochs in the History of Fish Culture (1881), and two encyclopedic articles—The Fisheries of the World (1882), and the one entitled Pisciculture, in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1885 ).
The great work of his life, Oceanic Ichthyology [says Doctor Jordan], was, how- ever, written during the period of his directorship of the National Museum, and it was published but a month before his death. Almost simultaneously with this were other important publications of the National Museum, which were his also in a sense, for they would never have been undertaken except for his urgent wish and encouragement. If a personal word may be pardoned, The Fishes of North and Middle America, which closely followed Oceanic Ichthyology, would never have been written except for my friend’s repeated insistence and generous help.
The first recorded scientific paper of Doctor Goode is a note’ On the Occurrence of the Bill-fish in fresh Water in the Connecticut River. The next is a critical discus- sion of the answers to the question Do Snakes Swallow their Young? In this paper he shows that there is good reason to believe that in certain viviparous snakes, the young seek refuge inthe stomach of the mother when frightened, and that they come out unharmed when the reason for their retreat has passed.
The first of the many technical and descriptive papers on fishes was the Catalogue of the Fishes of the Bermudas,? published in 1876. This is a model record of field observations and is one of the best of local catalogues. Doctor Goode retained his interest in this outpost of the great West Indian fauna, and from time to time recorded the various additions made to his first Bermudan catalogue.
After this followed a large number of papers on fishes, chiefly descriptions of species or monographs of groups. The descriptive papers were nearly all written in association with his excellent friend, Doctor Tarleton H. Bean, then Curator of Fishes in the National Museum.
In monographic work Doctor Goode took the deepest interest, and he delighted especially in the collection of historic data concerning groups of species. ‘The quaint or poetical features of such work were never overlooked by him. Notable among these monographs are those of the Menhaden, the Trunk-fishes, and the Sword- fishes.
The economic side of science also interested him more and more. ‘That scientific knowledge could add to human wealth or comfort was no reproach in his eyes. In his notable monograph of the Menhaden’ the economic value as food or manure of this plebeian fish received the careful attention which he had given to the problems of pure science.
Doctor Goode’s power in organizing and coordinating practical investigations was shown in his monumental work4 on the American Fisheries for the Tenth Census
‘American Naturalist, V, p. 487.
* Bulletin No. 5, United States National Museum.
3The Natural and Economical History of the American Menhaden. In Report of United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, Part 5. Washington, 1879.
4The Fisheries and Fishery Industry of the United States. Prepared through the cooperation of the Commissioner of Fisheries and the Superintendent of the Tenth Census, Washington, 1884.
Memoir of George Brown Goode. 53
in 1880. The preparation of the record of the fisheries and associated aquatic indus- tries was placed in his hands by Francis A. Walker, Superintendent of the Census. Under Doctor Goode’s direction skilled investigators were sent to every part of the coast and inland waters of the country.
His American Fishes, a popular treatise upon the game and food fishes of North America, published in 1888, is deserving of a special mention both because of the charming literary style in which it is written as well as its scientific accuracy and excellence. The wealth and aptness of the chapter headings of this book show that Mr. Goode’s wide reading was associated with everything which could illustrate his science on the literary side. He had a knowledge of everything even remotely con- nected with his ichthyological researches, from St. Anthony’s Sermon to Fishes, to the literature of fish cookery, while in one of his earliest papers, written at nineteen, his fondness for Isaac Walton and _ his familiarity with him are evident.
While never claiming the title of anthropologist, he was yet a close student of the anthropological and ethnological work in this country and abroad, and it is not too much to say that no professional anthropologist had a higher ideal of what his science might come to be or exercised a more discriminating criticism on its present methods and conditions than did Doctor Goode. He was, moreover, not only interested in the bio- logical problems of the anthropologist, but in technology and the history of art. The history of human invention and archeology were equally in his mind, and his suggestiveness in each of these fields could be attested by all of the anthropologists with whom he came in contact.
It would be difficult [says Professor Mason] to find among those who are pro- fessional anthropologists a man who had a more exalted idea of what this science ought to be. There is not, perhaps, another distinguished scholar who has endeay-
ored to collect into one great anthropological scheme all of the knowledge of all men in all ages of the world and in all stages of culture.
Doctor Goode was peculiarly related to the management of expositions and did more than any other person in America to engraft upon them museum ideas and widen their scope from the merely commercial and industrial to the educational and scientific.
His first experience in this field was in 1876, at the Centennial Exhi- bition held in Philadelphia. Professor Baird was in charge of the exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution and Fish Commission, and being much occupied at the time with other matters, the greater part of the installa- tion and other work connected with the exhibit was placed under the immediate supervision of Mr. Goode. The work done by the Smithso- nian and Government departments at this exhibition was pioneer work, it being the first international exhibition in which the United States Gov- ernment was engaged. It is not too much to say that the arrangement of the Smithsonian exhibit at Philadelphia was the model on which all subsequent exhibits of the kind were based, and that the classification, the installation, and the arrangement have had a lasting influence on
54 Memortal of George Brown Goode.
exhibition work everywhere. But every administrative activity of this sort was sure to result in some literary product, so that we find in 1876 Mr. Goode published A Classification of the Collections to illustrate the Animal Resources of the United States: A list of substances derived from the animal kingdom, with synopsis of the useful and injurious ani- mals, and a classification of the methods of capture and utilization. This work was afterwards published in an enlarged form as a bulletin of the National Museum.
His services as commissioner for the United States Government at the Fisheries Exhibition of Berlin in 1880 and London in 1883 have already been alluded to. ‘These, too, resulted in several articles in German and in a bulletin of the Museum, while several addresses and papers delivered at the Conferences of the International Fisheries Exhibition in London were published in the papers of the conferences, and full reports were made by Doctor Goode on his return to this country and published at the Government Printing Office.
He was the representative of the Smithsonian Institution at all the subsequent exhibitions held in this country—Louisville, 1884; New Orleans, 1885; Cincinnati, 1888; Chicago, 1893, and Atlanta, 1895— serving also as a commissioner and for a time acting Commissioner-Gen- eral to the Columbian Exposition held at Madrid in 1892.
The exhibits made under his direction were never repetitions. Each one contained new material never shown before, and exhibited the prog- ress of the Institution and Museum, as well as the advances made in the arts of taxidermy, installation, and labeling. Mr. Goode, too, always bore in mind the local interest, and endeavored to show speci- mens and materials which would be instructive to persons residing in the neighborhood of the place at which the exposition was held. ‘Thus at Cincinnati objects were prominent which related to the Ohio Valley, for Madrid he prepared an exhibit to illustrate the conditions of human and animal life in America at the time of the Spanish discovery, whilst at Atlanta especial stress was laid on showing the fauna, flora, archaeology, and mineral resources of the South Atlantic States. He prepared the report on the Madrid Exposition, and at the request of the Governfnent Commission drew up a provisional classification for the Chicago Exposi- tion, which, while not formally accepted, was used throughout in the official classification, many pages being copied without a change. For the Chicago, as well as the Atlanta Exposition, he prepared a carefully written catalogue, and for the latter an excellently condensed sketch of the Smithsonian Institution.
Nowhere were Mr. Goode’s administrative talents more strongly shown than in an exhibition. The plans of the floor space, the cases, the specimens were all carefully arranged in advance. Boxes were especially made of lumber which could be utilized for cases or platforms. Cases were marked, and not very long before the opening of the exposi-
Memoir of George Brown Goode. 55
tion the entire mass would be deposited on the bare space assigned to the Smithsonian exhibit. Usually other exhibitors had their material half arranged by this time, and the fear was expressed by sympathetic bystanders that the Smithsonian would not be ready. ‘The cases would be unpacked and the specimens put in them in whatever position they happened to stand, and up to the last day all would seem to be in con- fusion; but Doctor Goode knew his resources and his men as a general knows his army. Suddenly all detailed work would come to an end, and in the course of a few hours, as if by magic, the entire exhibit would be put in place. He had a pardonable pride in this sort of generalship, for whether at Chicago or Atlanta it had never failed him, and it earned the highest encomiums at Berlin, London, and Madrid.
Doctor Goode’s services at these various expositions were recognized by diplomas and medals, and from the Spanish Government he received the order of Isabella the Catholic, with the grade of commander.
I have already spoken of Mr. Goode’s administrative qualities as shown in his management of the National Museum; but his contributions to museum administration and the history of museums were not confined to his own work. From all parts of America and even as far distant as Australia his opinion was sought with regard to the plans for museum buildings as well as on minor matters of installation. All requests for such information and advice were fully answered in minute detail.
It was into his papers on museums that some of his best thoughts went, and it was there that we find epigrammatic statements which are con- stantly quoted by all interested in the matter.
The first paper by him on this subject appeared in the College Argus, March 22, 1871. It was entitled Our Museum, and was a description of the collectionin Judd Hall. ‘This article indicated plainly the museum instinct, for it was largely intended to make known the deficiencies in the collection, and pointed out how students and professors could make these good on their summer excursions. He also published a guide to this museum.
In 1888 he read before the American Historical Association a paper entitled Museum History and Museums of History. Here he traced the growth of the museum idea from the beginning down to the present time, repeating his now oft-quoted phrase, ‘‘An efficient educational museum may be described as a collection of instructive labels, each illus- trated by a well-selected specimen.’’ Atlases of ethnological portraits and works like those of Audubon he described as ‘“‘not books, but museum specimens, masquerading in the dress of books.’’
Even more forcible was a lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Insti- tute in 1889, entitled Museums of the Future. ‘‘The museum of the past,’’ he wrote, ‘‘must be set aside, reconstructed, transformed from a cemetery of bric-a-brac into a nursery of living thoughts.’’ . . . ‘‘The people’s museum should be much more than a house full of specimens
56 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
in glass cases. It should be a house full of ideas, arranged with the strictest attention to system.’’ . . . ‘‘A finished museum is a dead museum, and a dead museum is a useless museum.”’
Most noteworthy, however, was his paper contributed to the Museums Association of Great Britain in 1895, entitled The Principles of Museum Administration. This was a carefully prepared codification of ‘‘the accepted principles of museum administration,’’ which Mr. Goode hoped would ‘‘be the cause of much critical discussion.’’ The ideas were presented in the form of aphorisms and were exceptionally clear cut, ending with the assertion that ‘‘the degree of civilization to which any nation, city, or province has attained is best shown by the character of its public museums and the liberality with which they are maintained.”’
This paper was warmly welcomed by museum experts, many of whom testified by their letters the interest they had in the clear pre- sentation of the principles which should guide the museum administrator. At the 1896 meeting of the same association Mr. Bather said: ‘‘ When I read the magnificently exhaustive address by Doctor G. Brown Goode, published in our last report, it was manifest that all the ideas I had ever had were anticipated in that masterly production ;’’ whilst an obituary note in the same volume says, ‘‘ His early death is a great loss, not only to the United States Museum, but to museums in general, for he took a deep and active interest in all things affecting their development and well-being.”’ ;
The Manchester Guardian, September 20, 1896, says:
He was a recognized authority on all matters affecting museum administration, and in this capacity he last year wrote a paper on the principles of museum manage- ment and economy, which was brought before the annual congress of the Museums Association at Newcastle, and has since attracted much attention as an admirable exposition of the general theory of administration applicable to museum work in all its branches. It is of interest to note that Doctor Goode’s definition of a museum is an institution for the preservation of those objects which best illustrate the phenom- ena of nature and the works of man, and the utilization of these for the increase of knowledge and for the culture and enlightenment of the people. In this spirit Doctor Goode worked, and he not only achieved much in his own country, but was
also ever ready to cordially cooperate with foreign kindred institutions, especially those in England, for the advancement of museum work as a means of education.
These activities would have been sufficient for an ordinary man, but in addition he was the historian of American science.
In 1886 he delivered, as president of the Biological Society of Wash- ington, an address entitled The Beginnings of Natural History in Amer- ica, tracing it from Thomas Harriott, who came to this country in 1585, reciting the scientific labors of Captain John Smith, John Ray, Thomas Jefferson, and a host of others. ‘The spirit which actuated this address is well illustrated in the following paragraph:
It seems to me unfortunate, therefore, that we should allow the value of the labors
of our predecessors to be depreciated, or to refer to the naturalists of the last century as belonging to the unscientific or the archaic period. It has been frequently said
; Memoir of George Brown Goode. 57
by naturalists that there was no science in America until after the beginning of the present century. ‘This is, in one sense, true, in another, very false. There were then, it is certain, many men equal in capacity, in culture, in enthusiasm, to the naturalists of to-day, who were giving careful attention to the study of precisely the same phenomena of nature. The misfortune of the men of science of 1785 was that they had three generations fewer of scientific predecessors than have we.
This address he followed up by a second, entitled The Beginnings of American Science. The Third Century, delivered in 1887, also before the Biological Society. He divided the period from 1782 to 1888 into three periods, which he called after the names of Jefferson, Silliman, and Agassiz.
Continuing along this same line, he contributed to the American His- torical Association, in *890, a paper on The Origin of the National Scien- tific and Educational Institutions of the United States.
The material contained in these various papers was summed up in an unpublished work entitled What has been done for Science in America, 1492-1892, which illustrates in an interesting way the development of Doctor Goode’s mind, for in this study as much attention is given to astronomy, physics, and even comparative philology as is paid to natural history. Parallel with this work may be mentioned a collection of por- traits of almost every scientific man of importance mentioned in any of these four essays. Besides these, he wrote an article in the Science News, 1878, entitled The earliest American Naturalist, Thomas Harriott.
He was greatly interested in American history, a close student of the writings of the fathers—more especially of Washington and Jefferson— and an enthusiastic investigator of Virginia history, for which he had assembled a great mass of original material. He was especially interested in the study of institutional history, which he thought. approximated most nearly to the scientific method. It is more than likely that this interest grew out of his studies in genealogy, the most splendid result of which is his Virginia Cousins, though a great mass of material, still unpublished, attests the fact that these genealogical collections were intended to cover the South and to serve as a contribution to Southern history. He relates in the prologue to his Virginia Cousins that his interest in the Goode family tree was awakened in him by his father at the age of twelve.
The significance of genealogical studies for American history he recog- nizes in the following words: ‘‘’The time is coming when the sociologist and the historian will make an extensive use of the facts so laboriously gathered and systematically classified by genealogists, and it is probable that this can be better done in the United States than elsewhere;’’ and again, ‘‘One of the elements of satisfaction in genealogical study legiti- mately arises from the success of our attempts to establish personal rela- tions with past ages and to be able to people our minds with the images of our forefathers as they lived two, three, four hundred years ago.”’
58 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
But there was a scientific interest which attached to this work, as well as an historical one, for Doctor Goode was a strong believer in heredity, and he was profoundly impressed with the idea that man’s capabilities and tendencies were to be explained by the characteristics of the men and women whose blood flowed through their veins.
This idea, too, is brought out strongly in his biographical work, nowhere more strongly than in his biographies of Henry, Baird, and Langley (almost the last work he ever did) for the Smithsonian Memo- rial Volume, and it is carefully worked out in an elaborate plan of a biography of Professor Baird, which would probably have been the next literary work he would have undertaken had his life been spared.
He was greatly interested in bibliography, his methods in this work being most exact. He published bibliographies of Spencer Fullerton Baird, Charles Girard, Philip Lutley Sclater, and had under way bibli- ographies of Theodore Gill and David Starr Jordan.
A gigantic work in the same line [says Dr. Gill] had been projected by him and most of the materials collected; it was no less than a complete bibliography of Ichthyology, including the names of all genera and species published as new. In no way may Ichthyology, at least, more feel the loss of Goode than in the loss of the complete bibliography.
Mr. Goode was a student of the history of the scientific societies, and was himself deeply interested in their welfare. In all the Washington scientific societies he was an active member, serving as president both of the Biological Society and the Philosophical Society, before which he delivered notable addresses on the history of American science. He also belonged to the Anthropological and Geographic societies of Wash- ington and stoutly maintained the traditions of all these. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1888, was for many years a member of the Association for the Advancement of Science, being elected vice-president of the zoological section last summer, a few days before his death. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, of the American Society of Naturalists, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and among foreign societies he had been honored by election to the Société des Amis des Sciences Nat- urelles de Moscou, Société Zoologique de France, Zoological Society of London, and the Société Scientifique du Chile.
He seemed to regard historical and patriotic societies with an equal interest, being a member of the council of the American Historical Association and a member of the Virginia Historical Society, and the Columbian Historical Society of Washington, and of the newly formed Southern Historical Society. His work in connection with the hereditary and patriotic societies was so especially near to him as to demand an unusual mention. He was one of the organizers of the Sons of the American Revolution of the District of Columbia, holding the offices of vice-president-general and registrar-general in the national society, and at
Memoir of George Brown Goode. 59
the time of his death of president in the local society. He stimulated this society to issue historical publications, and saw a number through the press himself. A society known as the Sons of the Revolution having been founded with somewhat similar aims, Mr. Goode joined this organi- zation with the avowed purpose of bringing them together. In this society he held the office of vice-president. He was lieutenant-governor of the Society of Colonial Wars of the District of Columbia. He gave constant advice to the Daughters of the American Revolution during the period of their organization, and was instrumental in having the State of Massa- chusetts present, as a home for the Daughters of the American Revolu- tion. in Georgia, its building at the Atlanta Exposition, which was a copy of the old Craigie house in Cambridge, once occupied by Washington as his headquarters, and later the residence of Longfellow. The success of this effort gave him special pleasure, for he regarded it as one of the means for promoting friendliness between the people of New England and the people of the South.
Although these numerous duties and activities would seem to have been more than enough for any single man, Mr. Goode did not stop here. Every scientific activity of the Government had at some time or other the advantage of his wise counsel and his active cooperation. His public duties outside of the Smithsonian in connection with the Department of State, the Fish Commission, the census, and the various expositions abroad at which he represented his Government I have already alluded to; but he was possessed of a higher order of patriotism which even this service did not satisfy. Mr. William IL. Wilson, Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, lately Postmaster-General of the United States, and president of Washington and Lee University, says:
He was a richly endowed man, first, with that capacity and that resistless bent toward the work in which he attained his great distinction that made it a perennial delight to him; but he was scarcely less richly endowed in his more unpretending and large human sympathies, and it was this latter that distinguished him as a citizen and a historian.
As a citizen he was full of patriotic American enthusiasm. He understood, as all must understand who look with seriousness upon the great problems that confront a free people and who measure the difficulties of those problems—he understood that at least one preparation for the discharge of the duties of American citizenship was the general education of the people, and so he advocated as far as possible bringing within the reach of all the people not only the opportunities but the attractions and the incitements to intellectual living.
Doctor Goode, with the quick and warm sympathies of the man and of the histo- rian, seems to have felt that he could do no greater service to the people of his day and generation and to his country than in the most attractive and concrete way, if I may so express it, to lead the young men of this country to the study of the history of the past, to the deeds and the writings of the great men to whom we owe the foundation and the perpetuation of our institutions.
He was greatly interested in the establishment of a national university, and in 1891 read a paper in Philadelphia, afterwards printed in the
bo Memorial of George Brown Goode.
magazine Lend a Hand, edited by Edward Everett Hale, entitled Wash- ington’s University the Nation’s Debt of Honor. In this article he computed that the bequest of Washington to the United States for a national university would, at compound interest, amount, in 1892, to $4,100,000, and he proposed that the National Government should restore this sum as the nucleus of the endowment for the National University. He acted as secretary of the executive committee, of which the Chief Justice was chairman, which was laboring to this end, and spared no effort to bring it to a successful conclusion.
Another project in which he was interested and for which he labored was a movement to fully open French universities to American students. His interest was excited in this movement because he thought that American science was becoming one-sided, owing to the fact that all of the students who went abroad visited German universities. Of the American cominittee, which, in cooperation with the French committee, had this matter in charge, Doctor Goode was the secretary, and he had the satisfaction of seeing this project brought to a successful issue before his death.
He had a strong interest in literature, and wrote in an excellent Eng- lish style—clear, direct, and unpretentious. _I have never met a mind in touch with more far-away and disconnected points than his, nor one of the same breadth and variety of writing, outside of the range of his own specialty. He had fine zesthetic tastes and derived keen enjoyment from everything that was beautiful in nature or in art. He knew all natural sights and sounds, and recognized the note of every bird. He knew good pictures and good prints, was familiar with all the processes of graphic arts, and a good judge of them, both on the technical and the artistic side. He loved a beautifully printed book and an artistic bind- ing. All these tastes he utilized in the publications which he wrote or edited. The work which he had in hand at the time of his death and to which he devoted so much loving care, the History of the First Half Century of the Smithsonian Institution, he aimed to make the expression of all these tastes. To no writing which he ever did, did he bring a higher literary expression than to the pages which he prepared for this book. He was at infinite trouble in discussing such matters as the form of the page, the style of the type, the quality of the paper, the initial letters, the headlines and illustrations, and the binding, and when he discussed any of these points with the expert craftsmen his knowledge of the details was as full as their own.
In spite of ill health and suffering, his overwrought nervous system, and his occasional severe mental depression, he never allowed himself to take a cynical view of human nature. He was a man who loved his fellow-men, and to whom that love was repaid with a warmth to a degree rare in this day. He made all other men’s concerns his own. He sent notes and suggestions to hundreds of scientific men, whose work profited
Memoir of George Brown Goode. 61
thereby, and in the large circle of friends he had, scarcely one did not at one time or other come to Mr. Goode for advice and sympathy upon his own private affairs. He was an intensely loyal American patriot, ever careful that nothing should be said or done that should in anyway reflect upon his country. He was especially devoted to Virginia and never hap- pier than when he could spend a few days on her soil, looking over a historic house or copying some of the records which he hoped to turn to advantage in his historical studies.
‘* He is remembered,’’ says Doctor Dall, ‘‘as one never weary of well- doing; who reached the heights, though ever aiming higher; whose example stimulated and whose history will prove a lasting inspiration.’’
‘“As a public-spirited naturalist,’’ says Professor Osborn, ‘‘he leaves us the tender memory and the noble example, which helps us and will help many coming men into the higher conception of duty in the service and promotion of the truth. Wecan not forget his smile nor his arm passing through the arm of his friend.’’
I have never known a more perfectly sincere and loyal character than Doctor Goode’s, or a man who, with better judgment of other men or greater ability in molding their purposes to his own, used these powers to such uniformly disinterested ends, so that he could maintain the dis- cipline of a great establishment like the National Museum while still retaining the personal affection of every subordinate.
I have scarcely alluded to his family life, for of his home we are not to speak here, further than to say that he was eminently a domestic man, finding the highest joys that life brought him with his family and children.
He has gone; and on the road where we are all going there has not preceded us a man who lived more for others, a truer man, a more loyal friend.
of
/— MUSEUM-HISTORY AND MUSEUMS OF HISTORY.
ea BY
Wis GEORGE BROWN GOODE,
Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the U.S. National Museum.
63
MUSEUM-HISTORY AND MUSEUMS OF HISTORY?
By GEORGE BROWN GOODE,
Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, in charge of the U.S. National Museum.
The true significance of the word museum may perhaps best be brought to our apprehension by an allusion to the ages which preceded its origin—when our ancestors, hundreds of generations removed, were in the midst of those great migrations which peopled Europe with races originally seated farther to the east.
It has been well said that the story of early Greece is the first chapter in the history of the political and intellectual life of Europe.
To the history of Greece let us go for the origin of the museum idea, which in its present form seems to have found its only congenial home among the European offshoots of the Indo-Germanic division of the world’s inhabitants.
Museums, in the language of ancient Greece, were the homes of the muses. ‘The first were in the grovesof Parnassus and Helicon, and later they were temples in various parts of Hellas. Soon, however, the mean- ing of the word changed, and it was used to describe a place of study, or aschool. Athenzeus described Athens in the second century a s ‘‘the museum of Greece,’’ and the name of museum was definitely papliedl to that portion of the palace of Alexandria which was set apart for the study of the sciences, and which contained the famous Alexandrian library. The museum of Alexandria was a great university, the abiding place of men of science and letters, who were divided into many companies or colleges, and for whose support a handsome revenue was allotted.
The Alexandrian museum was destroyed in the days of Caesar and Aurelian, and the term museum, as applied to a great public institution, dropped out of use from the fourth to the seventeenth century. The disappearance of a word is an indication that the idea for which it stood has also fallen into disfavor; and such, indeed, was the fact. ‘The his- tory of museum and library run in parallel lines. It is not until the development of the arts and sciences has taken place, until an extensive
1A paper read before the American Historical Association, in Washington City, December 26-28, 1888.
NAT MUS 97, PT
to
3 65
66 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
written literature has grown up, and a distinct literary and scientific class has been developed, that it is possible for the modern library and museum to come into existence. ‘The museum of the present is more dis- similar to its old-time representative than is our library to its prototype.
There were in the remote past galleries of pictures and sculpture, as well as so-called museums. Public collections of paintings and statuary were founded in Greece and Rome at a very early day. "There was a gallery of paintings (Pinacotheca) in one of the marble halls of the pro- pyleum at Athens, and in Rome there were lavish public displays of works of art. M. Dezobry, in his Rome in the Time of Augustus, has described this phase of Latin civilization in the first century before Christ:
For many years [remarks one of his characters] the taste for paintings has been extending in a most extraordinary manner. In former times they were only to be found in the temples, where they were placed less for purposes of ornament than as an act of homage to the gods; now they are everywhere, not only in temples, in private houses, and in public halls, but also on outside walls, exposed freely to air and sunlight. Rome is one great picture gallery; the Forum of Augustus is gor- geous with paintings, and they may be seen also in the Forum of Cesar, in the Roman Forum, under the peristyles of many of the temples, and especially in the porticos used for public promenades, some of which are literally filled with them. Thus everybody is enabled to enjoy them, and to enjoy them at all hours of the day.
The public men of Rome, at a later period in its history, were no less mindful of the claims of art. ‘They believed that the metropolis of a great nation should be adorned with all the best products of civilization. We are told by Pliny that when Cezesar was dictator, he purchased, for 300,000 deniers, two Greek paintings, which he caused to be publicly displayed, and that Agrippa placed many costly works of art in a hall which he built and bequeathed to the Roman people. Constantine gathered together in Constantinople the paintings and sculptures of the great masters, so that the city, before its destruction, became a great museum, like Rome.
The taste for works of art was generally prevalent throughout the whole Mediterranean region in the days of the ancient civilizations, and there is abundant reason to believe that there were prototypes of the modern museum in Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, as well as in Rome. Collections in natural history also undoubtedly existed, though we have no positive descriptions of them. Natural curiosities, of course, found their way into the private collections of monarchs, and were doubt- less also in use for study among the savants in the Alexandrian museum. Aristotle, in the fourth century before Christ, had, it is said, an enormous grant of money for use in his scientific researches, and Alexander the Great, his patron, “‘took care to send to him a great variety of zoological specimens, collected in the countries which he had subdued,’’ and also ‘placed at his disposal several thousand persons, who were occupied in hunting, fishing, and making the observations which were necessary for completing his History of Animals.’’ If human nature has not
Report of U.S. National Museum, 1897. Part Il. PLATE 1.
Ve i Le
Museum-Ffistory and Museums of History. 67
changed more than we suppose, Aristotle must have had a great museum of natural history. i
When the Roman capital was removed to Byzantium, the arts and letters of Europe began to decline. The Church was unpropitious, and the invasions of the northern barbarians destroyed everything. In 476, with the close of the Western Empire, began a period of intellectual torpidity which was to last for a thousand years.
It was in Bagdad and Cordova that science and letters were next to be revived, and Africa was to surpass Europe in the extent of its libraries. In the Periplus, or Voyage of Hanno, occurs the following passage in regard to specimens of Gorillas, or ‘‘ Gorgones:’’
Pursuing them, we were not able to take the men (males); they all escaped, being able to climb the precipices, and defended themselves with pieces of rock. But three women (females), who bit and scratched those who led them, were not willing to
follow. However, having killed them, we flayed them, and conveyed the skins to Carthage; for we did not sail any further, as provisions began to fail.! Se; , yi
With the Renaissance came a period of new life for collectors. The churches of southern Europe became art galleries, and monarchs and noblemen and ecclesiastical dignitaries collected books, manuscripts, sculptures, pottery, and gems, forming the beginning of collections which have since grown into public museums. Some of these collec- tions doubtless had their first beginnings in the midst of the dark ages, within the walls of feudal castles, or the larger monasteries, but their number was small, and they must have consisted chiefly of those objects so nearly akin to literature as especially to command the attention of bookish men.
As soon as it became the fashion for the powerful and the wealthy to possess collections, the scope of their collections began to extend, and objects were gathered on account of their rarity or grotesqueness, as well as for their beauty or instructiveness. Flourens, in his Life and Works of Blumenbach, remarks: ‘‘The old Germany, with its old chateaux, seemed to pay no homage to science; still the lords of these ancient and noble mansions had long since made it a business, and almost a point of honor, to form with care what were called cabinets of curiosities.’’
To the apothecary of old, with his shop crowded with the curious substances used in the medical practice of his day, the museum owes some of its elements, just as the modern botanic garden owes its earliest history to the ‘‘physic garden,’’ which in its time was an outgrowth
of the apothecary’s garden of simples. "The apothecary in Romeo and Juliet — In whose needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff’d, and other skins Of eel-shaped fishes, —
was the precursor of the modern museum keeper. In the hostelries and taverns, the gathering places of the people in the sixteenth and seven-
‘Owen, Transactions, Zoological Society of London, V, p. 266, footnote.
68 Memortai of George Brown Goode.
teenth centuries, there grew up little museums of curiosities from foreign lands, while in the great fairs were always exhibited sundry gatherings of strange and entertaining objects.
At the middle of the last century there appear to have been several such collections of curiosities in Britain.
In Artedi’s ichthyological works there are numerous references to places where he had seen American fishes, especially at Spring Garden (later known as the Vauxhall Garden, a famous place of resort), and at the Nag’s Head, and the White Bear, and the Green Dragon in Stepney, in those days a famous hostelry in London. He speaks also of collections at the houses of Mr. Lillia and in that of Master Saltero (the barber-virtuoso, described by Bulwer in his Devereux), in Chelsea and at Stratford, and also in the collection of Seba, in Amsterdam, and in that of Hans Sloane.
With the exception of ‘‘the monk or Angel-fish, Anglis, alias Mermaid- jish,” probably a species of Sgwatina, which he saw at the Nag’s Head, all the fishes in these London collections belonged to the order Plectog- nathi.
Josselyn, in his Two Voyages to New England (1638-1673), after telling us how a Piscataway colonist had the fortune to killa Pilhannaw— the king of the birds of prey—continues, ‘‘ How he disposed of her I know not, but had he taken her alive and sent her over into England, neither Bartholomew or Sturbridge Fair could have produced such another sight.’’
Shakespeare’s mirror strongly reflects the spirit of the day. When Trinculo, cast ashore upon a lonesome island, catches a glimpse of Caliban, he exclaims:
What have we here? A man ora fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; avery ancient and fish-like smell. . . . astrange fish! Were I in England now, (as once I was), and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver; there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.
The idea of a great national museum of science and art was first worked out by Lord Bacon in his New Atlantis, a philosophical romance pub- lished at the close of the seventeenth century. The first scientific museum actually founded was that begun at Oxford in 1667, by Elias Ashmole, still known as the Ashmolean Museum, composed chiefly of natural history specimens collected by the botanists Tradescant, father and son, in Virginia, and in the north of Africa. Soon after, in 1753, the British Museum was established by act of Parliament, inspired by the will of Sir Hans Sloane, who, dying in 1749, left to the nation his invaluable collection of books, manuscripts, and curiosities. *
«The collections of Sloane, who was one of the early scientific explorers of America, were like those of the Tradescants, contained many New World speci-
Report of U. S. National Museum, 1897. Part Il. PLATE 2.
Louis AGASSIZ.
Museum-Fistory and Museums of History. 69
Many of the great national museums of Europe had their origin in the private collections of monarchs. France claims the honor of having been the first to change a royal into a national museum, when, in 1789, the Louvre came into the possession of a republican government. It is very clear, however, that democratic England, by its action in 1753, stands several decades in advance—its act, moreover, being one of deliberate founding rather than a species of conquest.
The first chapter in the history of American museums is short. In colonial days there were none. In the early years of the Republic, the establishment of such institutions by city, State, or Federal Government would not have been considered a legitimate act. When the General Government came into the possession of extensive collections as the result of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition in 1842, they were placed in charge of a private organization, the National Institution, and later, together
mens, and the British Museum as well as the Ashmolean was built around a nucleus of American material. Indeed, we can not doubt that interest in American explora- tion had largely to do with the development of natural history museums.
In those days all Europe was anxious to hear of the wonders of the new-found con- tinent, and to see the strange objects which explorers might be able to bring back with them, and monarchs sought eagerly to secure novelties in the shape of animals and plants.
Columbus was charged by Queen Isabella to collect birds, and it is recorded that he took back to Spain the skins of several kinds of animals. Even to this day may be seen in the old collegiate church in Siena a votive offering placed there nearly four centuries ago by the discoverer of America. It consists of the armor worn by him when he first stepped upon the soil of the New World and the rostrum of a swordfish killed on the American coast.
The state papers of Great Britain contain many entries of interest in this connec- tion. King James I was an enthusiastic collector. December 15, 1609, Lord South- ampton wrote to Lord Salisbury that he had told the King about Virginia squirrels brought into England which were said to fly. The King very earnestly asked if none were provided for him—whether Salisbury had none for him—and said he was sure Salisbury would get him one. ‘The writer apologizes for troubling Lord Salisbury, ‘‘but,’’? continued he, ‘‘you know so well how he [the King] is affected to such toys.”’
Charles I appears to have been equally curious in such matters. In 1637 he sent John Tradescant the younger to Virginia ‘‘to gather all rarities of flowers, plants, and shells.’
In 1625 we find Tradescant writing to one Nicholas that it is the Duke of Buck- ingham’s pleasure that he should deal with all merchants from all places, but espe- cially from Virginia, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Guinea, the Amazons, and the Kast Indies, for all manner of rare beasts, fowls and birds, shells and shining stones, etc.
In the Domestic Correspondence of Charles I, in another place, July, 1625, is a ‘Note of things desired from Guinea, for which letters are to be written to the mer- chants of the Guinea Company.’’ Among other items referred to are ‘‘an elephant’s head, with the teeth very large; a river horse’s head; strange sorts of fowls; birds’ and fishes’ skins; great flying and sucking fishes; all sorts of serpents; dried fruits, shining stones, ete.’’? Still farther on is a note of one Jeremy Blackman’s charge in all, £20—for transporting four deer from Virginia, including corn and a place made of wood for them to lie in.
70 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
with other similar materials, in that of a corporation, the Smithsonian Institution, which was for a long period of years obliged to pay largely for their care out of its income from a private endowment. It was not until 1876, however, that the existence of a National Museum, as such, was definitely recognized in the proceedings of Congress, and its financial support fully provided for.
In early days, however, our principal cities had each a public museum, founded and supported by private enterprise. The earliest general col- lection was that formed at Norwalk, Connecticut, prior to the Revolution, by a man named Arnold, described as ‘‘a curious collection of American birds and insects.’’ ‘This it was which first awakened the interest of President Adams in the natural sciences. He visited it several times as he traveled from Boston to Philadelphia, and his interest culminated in the foundation of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.’ In 1790 Doctor Hosack brought to America from Europe the first cabinet of min- erals ever seen on this continent.
The earliest public establishment, however, was the Philadelphia Museum, established by Charles Willson Peale in 1785, which had for a nucleus a stuffed paddlefish and the bones of a mammoth, and which was for a time housed in the building of the American Philosophical Society. In 1800 it was full of popular attractions.
There were a mammoth’s tooth from the Ohio, and a woman’s shoe from Canton; nests of the kind used to make soup of, and a Chinese fan six feet long; bits of asbestus, belts of wampum, stuffed birds and feathers from the Friendly Islands, scalps, toma- hawks, and long lines of portraits of great men of the Revolutionary war. To visit the museum, to wander through the rooms, play upon the organ, examine the rude electrical machine, and have a profile drawn by the physiognomitian, were pleasures from which no stranger to the city ever refrained.
Doctor Hare’s oxyhydrogen blowpipe was shown in this museum by Mr. Rubens Peale as early as 1810.
The Baltimore Museum was managed by Rembrandt Peale, and was in existence as early as 1815 and as late as 1830.
Earlier efforts were made, however, in Philadelphia. Doctor Chovet, of that city, had a collection of wax anatomical models made by him in Europe, and Professor John Morgan, of the University of Pennsylvania, who learned his methods from the Hunters in London and Sué in Paris, was also forming such a collection before the Revolution.
1'This collection [we are told] was sold to Sir Ashton Lever, in whose apart- ments in London Mr. Adams saw it again, and felt a new regret at our imperfect knowledge of the productions of the three kingdoms of nature in our land. In France his visits to the museums and other establishments, with the inquiries of Academicians and other men of science and letters respecting this country, and their encomiums on the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, suggested to him the idea of engaging his native State to do something in the same good but neglected cause. — Kirtland, Mem. American Academy of Sciences, Boston, I, xxii.
Report of U. S. National Museum, 1897. Part Il. PLATE 3,
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
a , ot ot a Wed if, oe ¢
ee (Mam
Museum-Fhistory and Museums of History. Wel
The Columbian Museum and Turrell’s Museum, in Boston, are spoken of in the annals of the day, and there was a small collection in the attic of the statehouse in Hartford.
The Western Museum, in Cincinnati, was founded about 1815 by ‘Robert Best, M. D., afterwards of Lexington, Kentucky, who seems to have been a capable collector, and who contributed matter to Godman’s American Natural History. In 1818 a society styled the Western Museum Society was organized among the citizens, which, though scarcely a scientific organization, seems to have taken a somewhat liberal and public-spirited view of what a museum should be. With the estab- lishment of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1812, and the New York Lyceum of Natural History, the history of American scientific museums had its true beginning.
The intellectual life of America is so closely allied to that of England that the revival of interest in museums and in popular education at the middle of the present century is especially significant to us. The great exhibition of 1851 was one of the most striking features of the industrial revolution in England, that great transformation which, following closely upon the introduction of railroads, turned England feudal and agricul- tural into England democratic and commercial.
The great exhibition marked an epoch in the intellectual progress of English-speaking people. ‘‘The great exhibition,’’ writes a popular novelist, and a social philosopher as well, ‘‘did one great service for country people. It taught them how easy it is to get to London, and what a mine of wealth, especially for after memory and purposes of con- versation, exists in that great place.’’
Under the wise administration of the South Kensington staff, a great system of educational museums has been developed all through the United Kingdom.
Our own Centennial Exhibition in 1876 was almost as great a revela- tion to the people of the United States. The thoughts of the country were opened to many things before undreamed of. One thing we may regret—that we have no such widespread system of museums as that which has developed in the motherland with South Kensington as its administrative center. England has had nearly forty years, however, and we but thirteen, since our exhibition. May we not hope that within a like period of time, and before the year 1914, the United States may have attained the position which England now occupies, at least in the respects of popular interest and substantial governmental support? ‘There are now over one hundred and fifty public museums in the United Kingdom, all active and useful.
The museum systems of Great Britain are, it seems to me, much closer to the ideal which America should follow, than are those of either France or Germany. ‘They are designed more thoughtfully to meet the needs of
72 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
the people, and are more intimately intertwined with the policy of national popular education.
Sir Henry Cole, the working founder of the Department of Science and Art, speaking of the purpose of the museums under his care, said to the people of Birmingham in 1874:
If you wish your schools of science and art to be effective, your health, the air, and your food to be wholesome, your life to be long, your manufactures to improve, your trade to increase, and your people to be civilized, you must have museums of science and art to illustrate the principles of life, health, nature, science, art, and beauty.
Again, in words as applicable to Americans of to-day as to Britons in 1874, said he:
A thorough education and a knowledge of science and art are vital to the nation, and to the place it holds at present in the civilized world. Science and art are the lifeblood of successful production. All civilized nations are running a race with us, and our national decline will date from the period when we go to sleep over the work of education, science, and art. What has been done is at the mere threshold of the work yet to be done.
The people’s museum should be much more than a house full of speci- mens in glass cases. It should be a house full of ideas, arranged with the strictest attention to system. I once tried to express this thought by saying: “‘An efficient educational museum may be described as a col- lection of instructive labels, each illustrated by a well-selected specimen.”’
The museum, let me add, should be more than a collection of speci- mens, well arranged and well labeled. Like the library, it should be under the constant supervision of one or more men, well informed, schol- arly, and withal practical, and fitted by tastes and training to aid in the educational work. I should not organize the museums primarily for the use of people in their larval or school-going stage of existence. The public school-teacher, with the illustrated text-books, diagrams, and other appliances, has in these days a professional outfit which is usually quite sufficient to enable him to teach his pupils.
School days last at the most only from four to fifteen years, and they end, with the majority of mankind, before their minds have reached the stage of growth most favorable for the reception and assimilation of the best and most useful thought. Why should we be crammed in the time of infancy and kept in a state of mental starvation during the period which follows, from maturity to old age—a state which is disheartening and unnatural all the more because of the intellectual tastes which have been stimulated and partially formed by school life?
The museum idea is much broader than it was fifty or even twenty- five years ago. ‘The museum of to-day is no longer a chance assemblage of curiosities, but rather a series of objects selected with reference to their value to investigators, or their possibilities for public enlightenment. The museum of the future may be made one of the chief agencies of the higher civilization.
Museum-Fiistory and Museums of Flistory. Te
I hope that the time will come when every town shall have both its public museum and its public library, each with a staff of competent men, mutually helpful, and contributing largely to the intellectual life of the community.
The museum of the future in this democratic land should be adapted to the needs of the mechanic, the factory operator, the day laborer, the salesman, and the clerk, as much as to those of the professional man and the man of leisure. It is proper that there be laboratories and _ profes- sional libraries for the development of the experts who are to organize, arrange, and explain the museums.
It is proper that laboratories be utilized to the fullest extent for the credit of the institution to which they belong. No museum can do good and be respected which does not each year give additional proofs of its claims to be considered a center of learning. On the other hand, the public have a right to ask that much shall be done directly in their interest. They will gladly allow the museum officer to use part of his time in study and experiment. They will take pride in the possession by the museum of tens of thousands of specimens, interesting only to the specialist, hidden away perpetually from public view, but necessary for proper scientific research. They are the foundations of the intellect- ual superstructure which gives to the institution its proper standing.
Still, no pains must be spared in the presentation of the material in the exhibition halls. The specimens must be prepared in the most care- ful and artistic manner, and arranged attractively in well-designed cases and behind the clearest of glass. Hach object must bear a label giving its name and history so fully that all the probable questions of the visitor are answered in advance. Books of reference must be kept in convenient places. Colors of walls, cases, and labels must be restful and quiet, and comfortable seats must be everywhere accessible, for the task of the museum visitor is a weary one at best.
All intellectual work may be divided into two classes, the one tending toward the increase of knowledge, the other toward its diffusion; the one toward investigation and discovery, the other toward the education of the people and the application of known facts to promoting their material welfare. ‘The efforts of learned men and of institutions of learning are sometimes applied solely to one of these departments of effort—sometimes to both—and it is generally admitted, by the most advanced teachers, that, for their students as well as for themselves, the happiest results are reached by carrying on investigation and instruction simultaneously. Still more is this true of institutions of learning. The college which imparts only second-hand knowledge to its students belongs to a period in the history of education which is fast being left behind.
The museum must, in order to perform its proper functions, contribute to the advancement of learning through the increase as well as through the diffusion of knowledge.
74 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
We speak of ‘‘educational’? museums and of the ‘‘educational”’ method of installation so frequently that there may be danger of incon- sistency in the use of the term. An educational museum, as it is usually spoken of, is one in which an attempt is made to teach the unprofessional visitor of an institution for popular education by means of labeled col- lections, and it may be, also, by popular lectures. A college museum, although used as an aid to advanced instruction, is not an ‘‘ educational museum’? in the ordinary sense, nor does a museum of research, like the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, belong to this class, although, to a limited extent, it attempts and performs popular educational work in addition to its other functions.
In the National Museum in Washington the collections are divided into two great classes: The exhibition series, which constitutes the educa- tional portion of the Museum, and is exposed to public view, with all possible accessories for public entertainment and instruction; and the study series, which is kept in the scientific laboratories, and is rarely examined except by professional investigators.
In every properly conducted museum the collections must, from the very beginning, divide themselves into these two classes, and, in planning for its administration, provision should be made not only for the exhibi- tion of objects in glass cases, but for the preservation of large collections not available for exhibition, to be used for the studies of a very limited number of specialists. Lord Bacon, who, as we have noticed, was the first to whom occurred the idea of a great museum of science and art, complains thus, centuries ago, in his book, On the Advancement of Learning, that up to that time the means for intellectual progress had been used exclusively for ‘‘amusement’’ and ‘‘teaching,’’ and not for the ‘‘augmentation of science.”’
The boundary line between the library and the museum is neither straight nor plain. ‘he former, if its scope be rightly indicated by its name, is, primarily, a place for books. ‘The latter is a depository for objects of every kind, books not excepted. The British Museum, with its libraries, its pictures, its archaeological galleries, its anthropological, geological, botanical, and zoological collections, is an example of the most comprehensive interpretation of the term. Professor Huxley has described the museum as ‘‘a consultative library of objects.’’ ‘This defi- nition is suggestive but unsatisfactory. It relates only to the contents of the museum as distinguished from those of the library, and makes no reference to the differences in the methods of their administration.
The treasures of the library must be examined one at a time, and by one person at atime. Their use requires long-continued attention, and their removal from their proper places in the system of arrangement. Those of the museums are displayed to public view in groups, in sys- tematic sequence, so that.they have a collective as well as an individual significance. Furthermore, much of their meaning may be read at a
i)
PLATE 4.
Part Il.
Report of U, S. National Museum, 1897.
DON FELIX D’AZARA.
Museum-ffistory and Museums of Ifistory. 75
glance. The museum cultivates the powers of observation, and the casual visitor even makes discoveries for himself, and, under the guidance of the labels, forms his own impressions. In the library one studies the impressions of others. .
The library is most useful to the educated; the museum to educated and uneducated alike, to the masses as well as to the few, and is a powerful stimulant to intellectual activity in either class.
The influence of the museum upon a community is not so deep as that of the library, but extends toa much larger number of people. The National Museum in Washington has 300,000 visitors a year, each of whom carries away a certain number of new thoughts.
The two ideas may be carried out, side by side, in the same building, and, if need be, under the same management, not only without antag- onism, but with advantage. That the proximity of a good library is absolutely essential to the influence of a museum, will be admitted by everyone. I am confident, also, that a museum wisely organized and properly arranged is certain to benefit the library near which it stands in many ways, and more positively than through its power to stimulate interest in books, and thus to increase the general popularity of the library and to enlarge its endowment.
Many books and valuable ones would be required in this best kind of museum work, but it is not intended to enter into competition with the library. When necessary, volumes might be duplicated. It is very often the case, however, that books are more useful and safer in the museum than on the library shelves, for in the museum they may be seen daily by thousands, while in the library their very existence is forgotten by all except their custodian.
Audubon’s Birds of North America is a book which everyone has heard of and which every one wants to see at least once in his lifetime. In a library, it probably is not examined by ten persons in a year. Ina museum, if the volume were exposed to view in a glass case, a few of the most striking plates detached, framed, and hung upon the wall near at hand, it will teach a lesson to every passer-by.
The library may be called upon for aid by the museum in many direc- tions. Pictures are often better than specimens to illustrate certain ideas. The races of man and their distribution can only be shown by pictures and maps. Atlases of ethnological portraits and maps are out of place in a library if there is a museum nearby in which they can be displayed. They are not even members of the class described by Lamb as ‘‘ books which are not books.’’ ‘They are not books, but museum specimens, masquerading in the dress of books.
In selecting courses for the development of a museum, it may be useful to consider what are the fields open to museum work. As a matter of convenience, museums are commonly classed in two groups—those of science and those of art—and in Great Britain the great national system
76 Memorial of George Brown Goode.
is mainly under the control of The Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education.
This classification is not entirely satisfactory, since it is based upon methods of arrangement rather than upon the nature of the objects to be arranged, and since it leaves in a middle territory (only partially. occu- pied by the English museum men of either department) a great mass of museum material, of the greatest moment, both in regard to its inter- est and its adaptability for purposes of public instruction.
On the other side stand the natural history collections, undoubtedly best to be administered by the geologist, botanist, and zoologist. On the other side are the fine-art collections, best to be arranged, from an esthetic standpoint, by artists. Between is a territory which no English word can adequately describe—which the Germans call Cudturgeschichte— the natural history of civilization, of man and his ideas and achieve- ments. ‘The museums of science and art have not yet learned how to partition this territory.
An exact classification of museums is not at present practicable, nor will it be until there has been some redistribution of the collections which they contain. It may be instructive, however, to pass in review the principal museums of the world, indicating briefly their chief char- acteristics.
Every great nation has its museum of natural history. ‘The natural history department of the British Museum, recently removed from the heart of London to palatial quarters in South Kensington, is probably the most extensive, with its three great divisions, zoological, botanical, and geological.
The historian and the naturalist have met upon common ground in the field of anthropology. ‘The anthropologist is, in most cases, historian as well as naturalist; while the historian of to-day is always in some degree an anthropologist, and makes use of many of the methods at one time peculiar to the natural sciences. ‘The museum is no less essential to the study of anthropology than to that of natural history. The library formerly afforded to the historian all necessary opportunities for work. It would seem from the wording of the new charter of the American Historical Association that its members consider a museum to be one of its legitimate agencies.
Your secretary has invited me to say something about the possibilities of utilizing museum methods for the promotion of historical studies. This I do with much hesitation, and I hope that my remarks may be considered as suggestions rather than as expressions of definite opinion. The art of museum administration is still in its infancy, and no attempt has yet been made to apply it systematically to the development of a museum of history. Experiment is as yet the museum administrator’s only guide, and he often finds his most cherished plans thoroughly impracticable. ‘That museums can ever be made as useful to history as
Museum-Fitstory and Museums of [1istory. Te
they are to physical science, their most enthusiastic friend dares not hope. ‘The two departments of science are too unlike.
The historian studies events and their causes; the naturalist studies objects and the forces. by which their existence is determined. The naturalist may assemble in a museum objects from every quarter of the globe and from every period of the earth’s history. Much of his work is devoted to the observation of finished structure, and for this purpose his specimens are at all times ready. When, however, he finds it neces- sary to study his subject in other aspects, he may have recourse to the phys- ical, chemical, and physiological laboratories, the zoological and botanical gardens, and aquaria, which should form a part of every perfect museum system. Here, almost at will, the phenomena of nature may be scruti- nized and confirmed by repeated observation, while studies impractica- ble in the nursery may usually be made by members of its staff, who carry its appliances with them to the seashore or to distant lands.
The requirements of the historian are very different. Nevertheless, I am confident that the museum may be made in his hands a most potent instrumentality for the promotion of historical studies. Its value is per- haps less fully realized than it would be were it not that so many of its functions are performed by the library. In the library may be found descriptive catalogues of all the great museums, and books by the hundred, copiously illustrated with pictures of the objects preserved in museums. A person trained to use books may by their aid reap the advantage of many museums without the necessity of a visit to one.
The exhibition series would be proportionately larger in an historical than in a natural-history museum. ‘The study series of a historical museum would mostly be arranged in the form of a library, except in some special departments, such as numismatics, and when a library is near might be entirely dispensed with.
The adoption of museum methods would be of advantage to the his- torian in still another way, by encouraging the preservation of historical material not at present sought for by librarians, and by inducing present owners of such material to place it on exhibition in public museums.
Although there is not in existence a general museum of history arranged on the comprehensive plan adopted by natural-history museums, there are still many historical collections of limited scope, which are all that could be asked, and more.
The value to the historian of archzeological collections, historic and prehistoric, has long been understood. ‘The museums of London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome need no comment. In Cambridge, New York, and Washington are immense collections of the remains of man in America in the pre-Columbian period—collections which are yearly growing in significance, as they are made the subject of investigation, and there is an immense amount of material of this kind in the hands of institutions and private collectors in all parts of the United States.
78 _ Memorial of George Brown Goode.
The museum at Naples shows, sc far as a museum can, the history of Pompeii at one period. The museum of St. Germain, near Paris, exhibits the history of France in the time of the Gauls and of the Roman occupa- tion. In Switzerland, especially at Neuchatel, the history of the inhab- itants of the Lake Dwellings is shown.
American ethnological museums are preserving with care the memorials of the vanishing race of red men. The George Catlin Indian Gallery, which is installed in the room in which this society is now meeting, is valuable beyond the possibility of appraisement, in that it is the sole record of the physical characters, the costumes, and the ceremonies of several tribes long extinct.
Other countries recently settled by Europeans are preserving the memorials of the aboriginal races, notably the colonies in Australia and New Zealand. Japan is striving to preserve in its Government museum examples of the fast-disappearing memorials of feudal days.
Ethnographic museums are especially numerous and fine in the northern part of Europe. ‘They were proposed more than half a century ago, by the French geographer, Jomard, and the idea was first carried into effect about 1840, on the establishment of the Danish Ethnographical Museum, which long remained the best in Europe. Within the past twenty years there is an extraordinary activity in this direction.
In Germany, besides the chief museum in Berlin, considerable ethno- graphical collections have been founded in Hamburg and Munich. Aus- tria hasin Vienna two for ethnography, the Court Museum (Hof-Museum), and the Oriental (Orientalisches Museum). Holland has reorganized the National Ethnographical Museum (Ryks Ethnographisch Museum) in Leyden, and there are smaller collections in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague. France has founded the Trocadero (Musée de Tro- cadero). In Italy there is the important Prehistoric and Ethnographic Museum (Museo preistorico ed ethnografico) in Rome, as well as the col- lection of the Propaganda, and there are museums in Florence and Venice.
Ethnographical museums have also been founded in Christiania