262 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



erally without date or location. He was naturally careless or 

 unmethodical, and his citations of other authors' works can not 

 safely be trusted without verification, and are usually incom- 

 plete. He had a very poor memory, and on several occasions had 

 redescribed his own species. This defect increased with age, and, 

 while no question of willful misstatement need arise, made it im- 

 possible to place implicit confidence in his own recollections of 

 such matters as dates of publication. He himself says in a char- 

 acteristic letter to F. B. Meek, written in July, 1863 : ' I go on 

 Monday to help H ferret out my skulking species of Palaeo- 

 zoic shells. May the recording angel help me ! God and I knew 

 them once, and the Almighty may know still. A man's memory 

 is no part of his soul.' 



" In spite of this constitutional defect, Conrad had an acute and 

 observant eye, and an excellent, if sometimes hasty, judgment on 

 matters of geology and classification. He was in advance of his 

 time in discriminating genera, and in field researches and work 

 on the specimens showed more than ordinary capacity. In those 

 branches of his work which required knowledge of literature and 

 systematic research he took less interest and pains. 



" Like many shy people, he was brought rather than ventured 

 into numerous controversies, which are now ancient history, and 

 need not be further alluded to. But the sketch just given will 

 enable readers to understand the origin of much that is irritating 

 to those who are obliged to rely upon Conrad's work and find in 

 it slips and errors so obvious that they seem unpardonable. He 

 had the defects of his qualities, but whether for good or evil he 

 was the principal worker in the field of Tertiary geology in 

 America for many years. He has left a voluminous literature, 

 and neither his faults nor his virtues can by any method be 

 ignored." 



When Darwin's Origin of Species was published, Conrad be- 

 came intensely interested in the discussions that wonderful book 

 provoked. He did not take the theory up as subject-matter for 

 an essay; but contented himself with innumerable notes and 

 memoranda that I found on loose slips of paper after his death. 

 He was bitterly opposed to evolution ; considered Agassiz the 

 world's greatest naturalist, and predicted that Darwin's "wild 

 speculations" would soon be forgotten. Every geological age 

 came, Conrad held, to a complete close, and the life of the suc- 

 ceeding one was a wholly new creation. These utterly crude and 

 untenable views he held to, to the last. 



It would be unjust to the memory of the subject of this sketch 

 to pass over without notice his characteristics as a man and 

 author. Conrad was something besides a profound paleontologist. 

 This his friends well knew : but for the writer of this sketch to 



