o'.ll PROCEEDINGS OF OTTAWA MEETING. 



corded observations with which an investigator of to-day must be 

 familiar tends to concentrate attention upon more and more restricted 

 lines. When, thus, one is removed who has left the stamp of his genius 

 upon many departments of science, in all of which he was conspicuous, 

 ami when we sum up his many activities in such brief form as to grasp 

 nt once an appreciation of them, our admiration for his abilities is the 

 more enhanced and our feeling of loss is the greater. Such a man was 

 the late Professor John Strong Newberry. 



Dr Newberry first saw the light in the little town of Windsor, Con- 

 necticut, December 22, ls-_>2, and therefore at the time of his death, 

 December 7, 1892, lacked about a fortnight of being seventy years of age. 

 His ancestors were among the founders of Windsor, which they helped 

 to settle in 1635. Dr Newberry's grandfather, Honorable Roger Newberry, 

 was a director in the "Connecticut Company" that purchased the tract 

 in northeastern Ohio known as the Western Reserve, and thither his 

 father, Henry, removed in 1824. when the late professor was two years 

 of age. The family settled at Cuyahoga Falls, south of Cleveland, and 

 there Dr Newberry's boyhood was passed. The elder Newberry became 

 actively engaged in opening up the coal resources of eastern Ohio and in 

 obtaining an outlet for them to Lake Erie. His sou was thus reared in 

 the midst of mining and of that kind of mining which especially devel- 

 oped fossil plants. In his later years Dr Newberry took pleasure in re- 

 counting the delight which he felt while yet a hoy in uncovering these 

 delicately preserved fronds from their enclosing shale. 



After preparation for college, the future professor entered the Western 

 Reserve University at Hudson, Ohio, and was graduated in 1846. He 

 next studied medicine in the Cleveland Medical School, and received his 

 degree of M. D. in 1848. The attractions of European study led him 

 shortly afterward to Paris, where he spent two years in further prepara- 

 tion in medicine. Interest in fossils prompted him also to seek in- 

 struction in paleontology, hut as he was accustomed many years later to 

 speak of the unsatisfactory character of his opportunities, they probably 

 amounted to little. On returning to America he began, in 1851, the 

 practice of medicine in Cleveland, and soon gained a wide clientele. It 

 is a, curious tact that in the same year in which Dr Newberry sought 

 European advantages, Leo Lesquereux, his great contemporary, migrated 

 to America. 



While Dr Newberry's medical practice increased and many influences 

 conspired to develop him into a. settled and successful physician, his 

 tastes for natural history kept making his profession more and more 

 irksome. Friends at Washington were not slow in taking advantage of 

 this and finally induced him to abandon Cleveland and active practice. 



