82 SAMUEL HUBBAED SCUDDER— MAYOR. lv " ton iv^m. 



Yet another brother in this gifted family was Horace Elisha Scudder, the well-known 

 author, and editor for several years of the Atlantic Monthly. 



Types they all were of the best that the heredity and the environment of New England 

 produced in those epoch-making mid decades of the nineteenth century when culture came to 

 soften the austere isolation of the Puritan, and the intolerance of old creeds gave place to an 

 expanded sense of service toward all mankind. 



At the age of 16 Samuel was sent to Williams College in order that he might come under 

 the intellectual guidance of that great educator, Mark Hopkins. His elder brother David had 

 preceeded him two years before, and in the following year Horace also entered the college. Thus 

 in the congenial companionship of relatives and friends he was to spend the four pivotal years 

 within which the trend of his life work was to be determined. 



He entered apparently without plans for the future, but about six weeks after college had 

 opened his sense of the beautiful was profoundly stirred by the sight of a glass case of butterflies 

 upon the wall of a friend's room. He tells of his surprise to find that these beautiful things 

 existed in such numbers in the immediate region of his home. At once he constructed a net 

 and proceeded to collect, and although the frosts of autumn soon put a check upon his plan he 

 had found his life interest and when a junior in college had definitely decided to devote bis 

 energies to the study of insects. 



In 1857 he graduated from Williams College at the head of his class; receiving the degree 

 of A. B., which the college very appropriately supplemented with an A. M., in 1860, and 

 doctor of science in 1890. 



One thinks that his choice of so unusual an interest for a life work was largely influenced 

 by his ardent love of the open air and all that pertained thereto, for although not a wide 

 traveler, Europe and Egypt marking the confines of his wanderings, yet, he knew New Eng- 

 land thoroughly, and the rural beauty of her peaceful valleys, and the majestic boldness of her 

 mountain peaks were the delight of all his years. His whole life was dominated by the charm 

 of this intimate association with that New England wherein in his day so much of untram- 

 meled nature still remained. Steeped in the charm of the Berkshire Hills he had spent his 

 college years, and as a lover of the wild in all New England he was to live his manhood through. 

 Thus while in college he became the leading spirit of the "Alpine Club of Williamstown " and 

 later he was to become a founder, and the first vice president of the Appalachian Club and to 

 succeed Prof. E. C. Pickering as its second president. It was he who suggested the name 

 "Appalachia" for the Journal of the club, and for nine years he served as chairman of its 

 publication committee. He himself contributed some charmingly composed articles, among 

 them: "A climb on Mount Adams in winter"; "The Alpine Club of Williamstown, Massachu- ' 

 setts"; "A winter excursion to Tuckerman's Ravine"; "The White Mountains as a home for 

 butterflies"; "The Alpine Orthoptera of North America"; "Retiring address as president of 

 the club, 1878"; and "The showiest butterfly of Glen Ellis, Basdarchia arthemis." 



Through deliberate choice when only 19 years of age he had definitely elected the field 

 for his life work. Yet in view of his high moral and mental character, the rare charm of his 

 personality, his remarkable mental balance, his energy, and mastery of detad in executive 

 work he might have won success in almost any field of human endeavor wherein judgment, 

 reliability, and erudition were required. 



Within all scientific organizations with which he was connected he held high place in 

 executive or business councds, and so remarkable was his organizing ability that every one 

 of the twelve serial numbers composing his great work upon the butterflies of New England 

 appeared promptly on the day announced for its publication. 



Having graduated from Williams College it was but natural that he should enter the 

 Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University in order that he might become a pupd of 

 the incomparable Loins Agassiz. So to Agassiz he went with the statement that he intended 

 to devote his entire life to the study of insects. The great master shook his head, and drawing 

 a very dead and discolored fish out of a bottle of alcohol he deposited it in the hands of young 



