24 William Keith Brooks 



embryology of pond snails such intimate knowledge of the 

 large collections of gasteropod shells that he could dis- 

 tinguish and identify them in the dark. Through McCrady 

 he became inspired by the beauties of form and problems 

 of life-history of the medusae that McCrady's studies at 

 Charleston were revealing. 



In 1875, he, with Albert H. Tuttle and Theodore B. 

 Comstock, opened a summer school in Cleveland, with 

 some twenty-five, chiefly school teachers, in attendance, 

 with lectures, excursions, and laboratory study of both 

 local and marine animals and plants. 



With the opening of the Johns Hopkins University, 

 Dr. Brooks saw an opportunity to devote himself to the 

 study of zoology untrammelled by tradition and with the 

 freedom to express the genius that was in him. Appointed 

 fellow, he was at once made instructor, and having no 

 administration routine was enabled to give himself wholly 

 to investigation not that he was lacking in initiative and 

 practical expedients. By personal representation he 

 obtained from prominent citizens a nucleus of support 

 for the founding of the Chesapeake Marine Laboratory, 

 the first school for study of marine life to take the field 

 opened by Agassiz's initial experiment. He also induced 

 the civic authorities to open a public aquarium in Druid 

 Hill Park, though this was subsequently abandoned, 

 since the city had not then grown sufficiently mature to 

 feel the need of such mild expression of intellectual 

 interest and means of instruction. 



His summer schools in the Chesapeake, at Crisfield, at 

 the old fort on the Kip Raps off Old Point Comfort, and at 

 Hampton, at first provided instruction for elementary 

 students and school teachers as well as opportunity for 

 research by naturalists, but later this latter side was the 

 one exclusively developed. His study of the fauna of the 

 Chesapeake soon made it evident that the fundamental 

 problems of marine biology could be more profitably 



