academy op sciences.] BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 119 



Dr. Williston's addresses, which have been mentioned, are notable, and of the several which 

 have been printed, the most important are those before the Kansas Academy of Sciences in 

 1897, the Ohio State chapter of the Sigma Xi in 1903, the Kansas chapter in the same year, 

 and the Yale chapter in 1917. His presidential address at the sixth biennial convention of the 

 society was considered so important that part of it is incorporated into the appendix to the 

 constitution and is often read to initiates as the best summation of the principles for which 

 the Sigma Xi stands. Still another noteworthy address was that delivered before the National 

 Educational Association at Denver in 1909, on the subject, " Has the American college failed to 

 fulfill its function ?" 



It has perhaps been evident that Williston's inclinations would have led him at once into 

 vertebrate paleontology as a field for research, with the probable result of more than doubling 

 the quantity and increasing with greater knowledge the quality of his output in that depart- 

 ment of science; but here opportunity passed him by and circumstance drove him to entomol- 

 ogy as an outlet for the pent-up energies of his creative mind. And his work in that field 

 was of the highest quality, as Riley's offer surely shows, for, as Williston himself says, "Had I 

 accepted the place of chief assistant perhaps I would now be the United States entomologist." 

 Williston's research began with the beetles, but he speedily turned his attention to the flies, 

 the results being published first in 1877, a few papers together in 1878, then exclusively from 

 1880 until 1886, when his second paleontological paper appeared. From 1887 until 1896 the 

 entomological papers were still the bulk of his output, but from this time on those in paleonto- 

 logy became more and more numerous until the insect research practically ceased in 1899. 

 In 1908, however, Williston did a remarkable thing in laying aside his paleontology and taking 

 up once more the study of the flies, his purpose being to make a final (thud) revision of their 

 taxonomy and publishing his "Manual of the North American Diptera." In this final volume, 

 which is both compendious and minute in detail, Williston shows a breadth and accuracy of 

 knowledge surprising in any case and doubly so when one considers that he had done no research 

 on the flies for more than a dozen years. 



Williston also wrote of recent zoology, mainly on the habits of creatures which came casu- 

 ally within the scope of his observation ; he wrote of sanitation and river pollution, of mankind 

 in the abstract and specifically when called upon to pay tribute to departed colleagues. But 

 his main research, as with his teaching, lay with the vertebrates of the geologic past, and herein 

 the volume of his work equals that on the insects and in the prejudiced eyes of a fellow verte- 

 bratist has a value which greatly exceeds it. For the vertebrate work is not solely systematic, 

 as was the entomological, but gave opportunity for broad generalizations, anatomical, evolu- 

 tional, and philosophical, of a very high order. 



At the University of Kansas the local paleontology naturally attracted Williston's attention, 

 partly because his initial work with Prof. Mudge in 1874 was in the rich Niobrara Cretaceous, 

 and because the work was in part that of the Kansas University Geological Survey. For more 

 than 12 years, with the material secured by Dr. F. H. Snow and Judge E. P. West as a nucleus, 

 Williston sought to build up the university collections, embodying the scientific results in 

 Volumes IV and VI of the State survey. This research deals largely with the creatures of the 

 Niobrara chalk, all of which are marine or aerial, with the exception of a rare dinosaur or two. 



At Chicago, Williston found that his predecessor, Dr. Baur, who had also served for a 

 number of years under Prof. Marsh at Yale, had already made some collections of Permian 

 material, and this fact gave the trend to his future work. As Mr. Riggs (letter) says of him : 



He made expeditions into the Trias and then into the Permian of the Southwest. Year after year his collectors 

 were sent into this field and soon publications announced their discoveries. Despite the rigors of climate, the in- 

 sufficiency of funds and the protests of his field men, he clung to this field and its problems for 12 years, ending only 

 with his life. He unearthed a fauna which has been much sought but little known. With only a single preparator, 

 with no illustrator but his own pen and brush, he made known this strange and primitive reptilian fauna with a 

 celerity and acumen which astounded his co-workers. 



