598 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



JOEL ASAPH ALLEN (1838-1921). 



Fellow in Class II, Section 3, 1871. 



The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was the first learned 

 society to recognize the scientific worth of Joel Asaph Allen. 



The young man had come to Cambridge to study with Agassiz. 

 He had been a member of the famous expedition to Brazil; he had 

 made collecting trips into the Middle West, and into Florida, and 

 had published some thirty or more scientific papers. This was fifty 

 years ago. On the year of his election he was made "Assistant" in 

 the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and assigned to work on the 

 Plains, and in the Rocky Mountains. He did pioneer work in these 

 regions, where the buffalo were "so numerous on one occasion that 

 they darkened the plains as far as the eye could reach," and where he 

 witnessed sanguinary engagements between Custer and the Sioux. 



Having collected an enormous amount of zoological material he 

 became absorbed in "working up" scientific collections, either those 

 which he himself had made or which came to him because of his genial 

 and sympathetic nature from other collectors. 



Although of frail physique, his powers of concentration were most 

 exceptional. While at work he seemed to live in another world, 

 unconscious of those about him and absolutely preoccupied with the 

 task he had undertaken. He labored daily to the point of exhaustion, 

 and looked upon rest only as a means of obtaining the necessary energy 

 for an additional day of devotion to his dominating interest. 



In 1885 he left the neighborhood of Boston and of Cambridge to 

 assume the duties of Curator of the Department of Ornithology and 

 Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History. Here he 

 rounded out and completed his life work. During his incumbency 

 exploring expeditions were sent into all parts of America, into Europe, 

 Asia, Africa, the Islands of the Pacific, Arctica and Antarctica. The 

 collections of mammals and birds increased from a paltry fifteen 

 hundred to upwards of a quarter of a million specimens. He described 

 between five and six hundred new species of mammals, and his pub- 

 lished scientific papers aggregated nearly fifteen hundred titles. 



Conscious of his own " timidity " in the presence of strangers, em- 





