THE NAUTILUS 



Vou XXV. OCTOBER, 1911. No. 6 



PROFESSOR JOSIAH KEEP.' 



BY WM. II. PALL. 



Professor Keep, whose death, July 27th last, at Pacific Grove, 

 California, was recently announced, was born in Paxton, Mass., in 

 1849, and was a graduate of Leicester Academy and Amherst Col- 

 lege (1874), taking his Master's degree as a postgraduate student in 

 1877. In that year he married Amelia Caroline Holman, of Lei- 

 cester, Mass., and went to California. There he taught in the 

 Golden Gate Academy and the Alamcda High School, being princi- 

 pal of the latter from 1881 to 1885. In 1885 he became Professor 

 of the Natural Sciences in Mills College, which, from small begin- 

 nings as a private seminary for girls, has through the efforts and 

 generosity of its founders developed into a well-equipped and charm- 

 ingly situated college, the Wellesley of the Pacific Coast. 



Here Professor Keep found his life-work as teacher and coadjutor 

 with the still surviving founder, Mrs. Mills, and saw the branches of 

 science originally confided to him alone, by degrees represented in 

 the teaching force by a number of competent instructors, while he 

 retained for himself the subjects of geology and astronomy. 



With the wide general knowledge required by his field of work, it 

 was of course impossible for him to be a specialist in any, but his 

 deep interest had been aroused in the study of the mollusca in which 

 the Pacific Coast is so rich. Between 1881 and 1911 he published 

 a series of what might be called primers of west-coast shells, illus- 

 trated with figures, enabling the beginner to gain a preliminary 



1 From Science, October, 1911. 



