.1915.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 41 



February 16. 



c 



The President, Samuel G. Dixon, M.D., LL.D., in the Chair. 



One hundred persons ijresent. 



The deaths of George J. Scattergood, July 16, 1914, and of 

 Benjamin Sharp, M.D., January 23, 1915, members, were announced. 



On the announcement of the death of Dr. Sharp, the following 

 was read by the Recording Secretary and ordered to be placed on 

 the minutes: 



The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia desires 

 to place on record its sense of the loss sustained by the society and 

 by the scientific world in the death of Dr. Benjamin Sharp, on 

 January 23. 



Dr. Sharp graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania in 1879. He subsequently studied in the Universities of 

 Berlin, Leipzig, and Wurzburg. Immediately after securing his degree 

 of Doctor of Philosophy from the last named institution in 1883 he 

 published his first paper in the Proceedings of the Academy, a reprint 

 of his graduation thesis on the anatomy of Ancylus. He subse- 

 quently i:)ublished twenty communications as contributions to the 

 Proceedings. They cover a wide range of subjects, but are most 

 important, perhaps, as studies of the visual organs of mollusks. 



Dr. Sharp was elected Corresponding Secretary of the Academy 

 in 1890 and served efficiently until 1902. 



His work as an attache of the United States Fish Commission, 

 as zoologist of the first Peary Arctic Expedition, and as professor 

 in the Academy, the University of Pennsylvania, and in the Central 

 High School, together with his explorations of Behring Sea, the West 

 Indies, and the Sandwich Islands, was all prosecuted in direct asso- 

 ciation with the Academy, to which he was always most generous 

 in the expression of his obligation for encouragement and assistance. 



Dr. Sharp was endowed with a retentive memory and the faculty 

 of clear and accurate statement. He was a man of singular personal 

 charm and of an unusual range of sympathy and accomplishment. 

 A strikingly attractive figure anywhere, he was equally at home in 

 a scientific meeting, a drawing-room, or on the dock with his chums, 

 the fishermen. He retained to the last the qualities of an eager, 

 ingenuous boy without any of the disadvantages of immaturity. 



Although not intimately associated with the Academy since 

 1902, his periodical visits sustained his affectionate relations with 

 his fellow-members and testified to his loyalty to the institution. 



The realization of its own loss in the death of Dr. Sharp 



