EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNEY. 523 



1843. Captain Atwood's special knowledge, of course, attracted the 

 attention of Agassiz, who visited him at Long Point in 1852, a visit 

 that was the beginning of a life-long friendship. The acquaintance 

 of scientific men was a stimulus and an aid to him, and led him to 

 redouble his efforts. 



In 1857, while a member of the legislature, Captain At wood was 

 appointed a commissioner, with Judge Chapman and Dr. Henry 

 "Wheatland, to report on the artificial propagation of fish. He made 

 experiments on the fecundation of trout eggs, and succeeded in de- 

 veloping the embryos, although the ova died before hatching. The 

 report of the commission was the first document of the kind published 

 in this country. 



His reputation as a student of ichthyology became so considerable 

 that he was asked, in 1868, to give a course of lectures on fishes 

 before the Lowell Institute. These lectures, illustrated as they were 

 by quaint anecdotes, were very successful. 



He served in the State Senate in 1869, 1870, and 1871, and during 

 his term delivered important speeches on our sea fisheries, and espe- 

 cially on their possible exhaustion. Indeed, he lived to see the subject 

 of ocean and inland fisheries, about which little was known in his youth, 

 submitted to scientific investigation by State and United States com- 

 missions, — an investigation to which he was a valuable contributor. 



Captain Atwood was a member of the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, the Institute of Technology, and the Essex Institute. He 

 was chosen a Fellow of the Academy in 1868. He died at Province- 

 town, November 7, 1886. 



EPHRAIM WHITMAN GURNEY. 



Ephraim Whitman Gurnet, the son of Nathan and Sarah 

 (Whitman) Gurney, both of families long settled in Abington, was 

 born in Boston, February 18, 1829. Certain well-defined aptitudes 

 and tastes, together with some external conditions, for a time drew 

 him towards a mercantile career, and it was not until about his nine- 

 teenth year that the stimulus received from the reading of his leisure 

 hours and from certain phases of religious inquiry turned him finally 

 to the pursuit of letters. His preparation for college was then elFected, 

 with some assistance from private instruction, in sixteen months ; he 

 entered Harvard College in 1848, and graduated in 1852, already sin- 

 gled out as a man of especial mark. Plans which he had formed for 

 subsequent study in Cambridge were broken up by a severe illness in 



