116 SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON— LULL. lMmm TrS^Smi 



account of the capture of Jefferson Davis, by the ''printer's devil," who was at that time but 

 13 years old. 



However, the value of learning the printer's trade did not outweigh that of further school- 

 ing, so WiUiston was sent back to the Agricultural College to continue his work. Here he read 

 Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," which made him a firm believer in evolution, despite its evident 

 antagonism to the teaching of the church. His friend and preceptor, Prof. Mudge of the 

 Agricultural College, to whom he owed so much, remained opposed to the doctrine until his 

 death. Under Prof. Mudge, Williston studied natural philosophy, chemistry, botany, 

 geology, zoology, veterinary science, mineralogy, surveying, spherical geometry, conic sections, 

 calculus — a range of subjects possible only in the older days. In 1869 unrest again seized 

 Williston, so in spite of the fact that he had not completed his collegiate education he decided 

 to seek his fortune, and after somewhat varied and disheartening experiences received the 

 opportunity of doing railroad construction work, first in a clerical, later in an engineering capac- 

 ity, until finally his health, which was still not at all robust, compelled him to give up such work 

 and return to college. He completed his course in 1872, taking the bachelor of science degree, 

 for he did not feel sufficiently proficient in Plato and Herodotus to make up the back work neces- 

 sary for the degree of bachelor of arts. The panic of 1872 and 1873 made it impossible for him 

 to obtain employment as a civil engineer. This circumstance proved to be of vital importance 

 in his career, for, an early interest in medicine reawakening, he determined to study under the 

 supervision of the family physician, Dr. Patee, of Manhattan, a regular procedure in those days, 

 when all that was required was that a student of medicine "read" in some physician's office for 

 three years, taking two courses of lectures of four or six months each, the second merely a repe- 

 tition of the first, before coming up for his degree. Williston was given very little advice or 

 direction in his studies, except that he was told to study anatomy and physiology first. For 

 material he excavated in an old Indian burial ground, and the study of the bones thus exhumed 

 directed his attention to osteology, in which he later became so high an authority. 



Trouble in the Agricultural College in 1873 led to the dismissal of Prof. Mudge, and WiUiston, 

 not understanding the situation, took the former's classes for a while. The apparent injustice 

 of the matter, however, made him so strong a partisan of Prof. Mudge that his manifestation 

 thereof proved more than the authorities could stand and he was asked to leave. Otherwise 

 he might have succeeded his preceptor as a teacher of comprehensive "science." 



Williston 's convictions concerning evolution, the result of absorbing the writings of Darwin, 

 Huxley, Tyndall, and especially a German writer, Buecher, coupled with evidences from his 

 own observation, led to his delivering in the Congregational Church of Manhattan what he 

 believed to have been the first public lecture in favor of evolution ever given west of the Missis- 

 sippi Kiver. This was in February, 1874, and was, as he himself says, given with the cocksure- 

 ness of youth, the address being lacking neither in positive nor dynamic statements. Such a 

 thing was daring in those days, nevertheless Williston was shocked at the severe criticism 

 which he received in the local press. 



Meanwhile Prof. Mudge was carrying on geological explorations in western Kansas and had 

 discovered the famous specimen of the Cretaceous tcothed bird, Ichthyornis, which by pure 

 accident he sent to Prof. Marsh rather than to Prof. Cope, for whom he intended it. Marsh's 

 interest was promptly stimulated, and in his characteristic way he immediately engaged Mudge to 

 collect fossils for Yale College. Mudge and a young assistant collected for a while in the north- 

 western part of the State, and then, as the hope of success seemed more promising in the Smoky 

 Hill Valley, decided to move thither. Fear of the Indians, however, proved to be too much 

 for the assistant, and Mudge was forced to seek other aid. He engaged one of his former 

 students, H. A. Brous, who in turn invited Williston to accompany him, and after fulfilling an 

 engagement to play the cornet in a band on July Fourth, Williston began what was to be his 

 subsequent life work as a paleontologist. Thus, as he says, " It was this accidental and thought- 

 less decision that led to my life's devotion to Paleontology. Had I not gone with him in all 

 probability [to-day] I would have been a practitioner of medicine somewhere in Kansas." 



