120 SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON-LULL. imntoa frSt^n, 



In this exploration Williston found great difficulties in his way, for he says in "American 

 Permian Vertebrates" (p. 2) : 



The [Texas Permian] beds are the most difficult of exploitation of any known to me in a field experience of 35 

 years. Usually the fossils are more or less hidden in concretionary nodular masses, almost invisible or indistinguish- 

 able to the untrained eye until they have been broken up and weathered, when the inclosed fossils have lost much 

 of their value. Rarely single bones and even whole skeletons are found in clay deposits almost or quite free from 

 matrix, but many such are not to be expected. 



Finally, however, as a result of painstaking research, bone beds, notably the Cacops bed 

 discovered by Paul Miller in 1909, were found which yielded considerable more or less perfect 

 material. It was also Williston's privilege to study the Marsh collection of Permian material 

 at Yale, one result of which was the unearthing of specimens from storage, the perfection of 

 which was totally unsuspected, notably the practically perfect Lininoscelis type. As a result, 

 Williston, supplemented by E. C. Case, who also had access to the American Museum material, 

 has given us a knowledge of Paleozoic air-breathing vertebrates, Amphibia and Reptilia, which 

 was almost unhoped for. It was largely because of the qualitj' of his research in this line that 

 Yale University honored herself by admitting Prof. Williston to the doctorate for the third 

 time, as the degree of doctor of science was conferred upon him in June, 1913. 



Williston's life is a stirring tale of one who rose superior to heredity, environmental 

 limitations, and the petty discouragements of life, especially those due to financial restrictions 

 in the pursuit of a costly science. He immortalized himself not only in the amount of his 

 published research, of over 4,000 printed pages, some of them bearing the impress of genius, 

 but in the knowledge and inspiration which he instilled into those whose privilege it was to 

 sit at his feet. Certain of these, such as Branson of the University of Missouri, Sellards and 

 Beede of the University of Texas, Logan of the Mississippi Agricultural College, and Moore 

 of the University of Kansas, have followed lines of work more strictly geological; but Case 

 of the University of Michigan, Riggs of the Field Museum, Brown of the American Museum, 

 Moodie of the University of Illinois, and Mehl of the University of Missouri form a group 

 which will worthily carry on his vertebrate research. Vale magister ! 



Part II. — Published Results. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENTOMOLOGY. 



The list of Dr. Wiiliston's published writings embraces a considerable range of subjects, 

 and in the two departments of entomology and vertebrate paleontology includes works of high 

 authoritative value. Those in entomology being outside the narrow limits of the present writer's 

 research, he must turn to others for a critical review. Dr. J. M. Aldrich, of the United States 

 National Museum, has kindly sent m'e an estimate of this department of Williston's activities, 

 and with his permission I extract from it the following: 



Williston never held an official entomological position. But he found time to do much valuable work as a pioneer 

 in dipterology. * * * His interest in the flies began to be serious about 1S78. At this time Osten Sacken had 

 returned to Europe, and there was not a single American student of the order but Edward Burgess, the Boston yacht 

 designer, who published only one small paper. So Williston was virtually alone on the continent. In the absence of 

 guidance, he plowed his way by main strength (as he often narrated to the writer) through descriptions of species until 

 here and there he made an identification, which served as an anchor point for a new offensive. He had few definitions 

 of genera, so had to work backward from the species. After a year or two of this tedious and time-wasting effort, he 

 came upon Schiner's Fauna Austriaca, in which the Austrian families, genera, and species of Diptera as known up to 

 1862-1864 are analytically arranged and succinctly described. To his immense relief and satisfaction, he now found 

 that all his American flies could be traced to their families, and most of them to their genera, in this fine work. He 

 was so impressed by the saving of time accomplished that his own publications coming later show the effect of this 

 early experience on every page; everywhere he has the beginner in mind and is clearing the way for him. 



In a few years he began publishing tentative papers analyzing the American families and genera of the flies. These 

 he extended and enlarged in a pamphlet in 1888, and again in a bound volume in 1896; and in 1908 published a third 

 edition still more complete, with 1,000 figures, his well-known "Manual of Diptera." This third edition is his main 

 contribution to entomology. It is a handbook unapproached by anything else dealing with a large order of insects. 



