400 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE. 



THE United States has had no more assiduous working natu- 

 ralist than Dr. G. Brown Goode ; and few if any of them 

 have contributed as much as he to the development and increase 

 of the resources of our country. He was also one of the world's 

 greatest museum administrators, and an anthropologist of most 

 comprehensive views. 



George Brown Goode was born in ISTew Albany, Indiana, 

 February 13, 1851, and died in Washington, D. C, September 6, 

 1896. While he was still a boy his parents removed to the State 

 of New York. He cultivated the taste for natural history, which 

 he manifested early, and it found food and encouragement in 

 the Reports of the Smithsonian Institution, which formed part of 

 the family librarj^, and which he was accustomed to read. As 

 a student in Wesleyan University, whence he was graduated in 

 1870, he was marked by his predilection for natural-history 

 studies and the interest he took in museum methods. After 

 graduation he entered Harvard University as a graduate student, 

 and enjoyed the teaching of Agassiz. On the erection of Orange 

 Judd Hall at Wesleyan University, he was invited by the faculty 

 of that institution to arrange the collections in natural history. 

 He performed the work with a skill and discrimination that 

 marked him as specially adapted for it, and had, no doubt, great 

 influence in deciding his future career. His first contribution to 

 scientific literature was a note published in the American Natu- 

 ralist in 1871, recording the occurrence of the billfish in fresh 

 water in the Connecticut River ; and his first paper exhibiting 

 range of investigation and power to collate facts was one show- 

 ing that snakes do actually receive their young within themselves 

 by swallowing them, on the appearance of danger, to let them out 

 again when the danger is jDast. For the purpose of this inquiry 

 he sought evidence through an advertisement in the American 

 Agriculturist, asking for the communication of observations on 

 the subject. He had become interested in the work of the United 

 States Fish Commission, and meeting Prof. Baird at the meeting 

 of the American Association in Portland, Me., in 1873, was invited 

 by him to become a member of its staff. In that capacity he was 

 for several years a member of the commission's summer parties. 

 He also became connected with the National Museum as assistant 

 curator, and served it for a time without other compensation than 

 duplicate specimens, and these he turned over at once to the 

 museum in Orange Judd Hall. He was named in a short time 

 assistant director of the museum, and in 1887 assistant secretary 

 of the Smithsonian Institution in charge of the National Museum, 



