TIMOTHY ABBOTT CONRAD. 259 



" Timothy," remarked an old Friend, " was thy grandfather 

 the only man who ever lived in the country ? " 



" Other men exist in the country, but no one else lived like my 

 grandfather," he replied. 



Brought up, when with his parents, in so scientific an atmos- 

 phere, and when at his birthplace so delightfully surrounded not 

 only by congenial kinsfolk, but Nature in her most attractive 

 guise, it is little wonder that Conrad became a naturalist. Mr. 

 Fraley tells me that, when a youth in early teens, Gonrad was the 

 " president " of an " Academy of Science " of which he, Mr. Fraley, 

 was " secretary," and that it was conducted with all the decorum 

 and good faith of the institution after which it was modeled. 



Conrad was educated at select schools under the superintend- 

 ence of Friends, but really educated himself, so far as the " higher 

 branches" were concerned, acquiring without a teacher a thor- 

 ough knowledge of Latin, Greek, and French. His skill in draw- 

 ing was remarkable and early developed. He not only made all 

 his own illustrations, but did considerable for others, as the shells, 

 seaweed, and other small objects on some of Audubon's plates of 

 birds. Before seriously taking up the special studies that subse- 

 quently made him famous, he wrote many sketches of a popular 

 character, and occasionally drifted into verse. His father being 

 a publisher and printer, Conrad entered the establishment as a 

 clerk, reluctantly probably, and there learned the printer's art, 

 and when his father died, in 1831, he continued the business for a 

 short time, but the love of natural history was too strong to be 

 overcome, and he gave up the shop and its belongings. Because 

 of a preference for walking afield to attending religious services, 

 a committee of Friends called upon Conrad, and, not accepting 

 his explanation, they directed his name to be stricken off their 

 roll of membership. Conrad did not like their action, and prob- 

 ably it is due to this that he seldom afterward attended any 

 religious gathering, occasionally dropping into some country 

 Quaker meeting, but always, as he said, for old times' sake and 

 not spiritual profit. 



In 1831 he was elected a member of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, and, some years after, of the American Philosophical So- 

 ciety. Of many foreign learned societies he was a correspondent, 

 but, keeping no record of such elections, the names and dates of 

 election have been lost. 



Conrad's first volume bears date of 1831, and has the following 

 title : American Marine Conchology, or Descriptions and Colored 

 Figures of the Shells of the Atlantic Coast. Of this little volume, 

 printed for the author, Conrad says in his preface, " it is designed 

 to supply a deficiency which has long been felt by the cultivators 

 of American natural history." The work contains seventeen 



