310 HENRY INGERSOLL BOWDITCH. 



picking his steps painfully down the stairway, and saying humorously, 

 " Slow but sure," — m order to show an apparatus for testing the daily 

 variations of the magnetic compass. 



Mr. Batchelder was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 1866. 

 He was also a member of the Boston Society of Natural History, of 

 the Boston Society of Arts, of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, of the American Institute of New York, 

 and of the Natural History Society of Portland, Maine. 



1893. John Trowbridge. 



HENRY INGERSOLL BOWDITCH. 



Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch died on January 14, 1892, after 

 a life of unusually varied interests and activities, in the eighty-fourth 

 year of his age. His illness, although not disabling until the last year 

 or two of his life, had been long and distressing, and, with the added 

 infirmities of age, the years of waiting became weary, especially after 

 the death, in December, 1890, of his beloved companion for moi'e than 

 half a century. But he did not lose his cheerfulness or his courage. 

 His generous thoughtfulness of others and his fine serenity of mind 

 remained to the last. As he read or quoted a favorite passage from 

 the " De Senectute," the old fire flashed from his eyes almost undimmed. 

 To those whose privilege it was to be near him the example of his death 

 will always be an inspiring memory. 



Dr. Bowditch was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on August 9, 1808. 

 His father, Nathaniel Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, was a 

 man of sterling virtues, whose own eai'ly struggles for an education 

 had impressed upon him the value of self-discipline and the vanity of 

 such accomplishments as music, for instance, which he regarded as 

 worse than useless in building up character. He had not, however, 

 the Puritanic or the Calvinistic austerity so common in New England 

 in his day. He believed in young peoj^le having a good time in a 

 healthy, sturdy sort of way. Few sons could say as much as Dr. 

 Bowditch said with a good deal of fervor, that the only mistake which 

 his father had made for him, in his estimation, was his attitude to- 

 wards music. Dr. Bowditch's mother was Mary Ingersoll, the beauty 

 of whose life was reflected in her influence upon her home and her 

 children. Under such parental guidance, and with the companionship 

 of three brothers and two sisters very like him in possessing an inher- 

 itance of individuality and force, and all united in a strong bond of 

 family affection, his child life was ideal. 



