ADMIRAL CHARLES WILKES. 323 



public work until 1852, when he became an assistant of Mr. James 

 Wall in his great palfeontological explorations of New York. From 

 this time to his death he was steadily occupied in that class of govern- 

 mental researches that forms so large a part of our American scientific 

 work. In the palseontological studies of the surveys in New York, 

 Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio, he had a large share ; and in all of them 

 has raised for himself monuments to his painstaking researches. His 

 most important work, however, was done in connection with tlie gov- 

 ernment surveys of the Territories. This work was begun as an assist- 

 ant of Mr. Hall in the study of the then Territory of Nebraska. The 

 principal results of this labor were published by this Academy in Vol. 

 Y. of its Memoirs, 1855. The last twenty years of his life he was a 

 resident of Washington, and continually engaged in the study of the 

 rich faunre of invertebrate life from the districts beyond the Mississippi. 

 His reports on the invertebrate life of these districts, measured by any 

 standard, are to be ranked with the labors of the first palaeontologists 

 in the world. The very week of his death, the writer of this notice 

 received the last and greatest of his works, — a report on the inverte- 

 brate cretaceous and tertiary fossils of the upper Missouri country, — 

 a quarto volume of between six and seven hundred pages of text and 

 nearly fifty plates. This work alone would prove the fit basis of a 

 great reputation. It shows him to have carried his admirable powers, 

 the unwavering fidelity, the patient courage, which he had borne 

 through forty years of bodily weakness, unshaken to his end. 



The peculiar seclusion in which Mr. Meek's life had been passed will 

 not serve to make his loss so quickly felt as that of many another stu- 

 dent of nature. But, though he passes from us leaving behind few 

 connected with him by intimate friendships or even close acquaintance, 

 there are few names in the history of American science so sure 

 of a place for the time to come. 



ADMIRAL CHARLES WILKES. 



This distinguished officer entered the navy in 1818, as a midshipman. 

 In 1826, he was made a lieutenant; in 1843, commander; in 1855, 

 captain; in 1862, commodore; and in 1866, rear-admiral. His first 

 cruise was up the INIediterranean ; the next on the west coast of South 

 America, under Commodore Stewart. In 1836, he surveyed, in the 

 " Porpoise," George's Bank, oflf" Massachusetts ; and, in 1837, Tybee 

 Bar, at the mouth of the Savannah River. In 1838, he was selected 

 by President Van Buren to command the South Sea Exploring Expe- 



