DEPAKTMENT KEPOKTS. 33 



of this College, ^vhicli has since proved so prosperous and useful an adjunct 

 of the institution. Work in this line was continued during the remainder of 

 his life. At the Kansas College he founded a Science Club, patterned some- 

 what after the fashion of the Society here, which proved prosperous and useful. 



"Will. Kedzie was brilliant, quick as the lightning's flasii, yet always com- 

 posed, dignified, genial, kindly, generous; a brilliant man, yet none the less 

 a true man ; and one whose short life has brought to this, his Alma Mater, no 

 small measure of credit and respect. He was but twenty-nine years old when 

 he died. Few lives make such a record in so short a time. 



"Prof. Kedzie was married in 1876 to Ella M. Gale, daughter of the Pro- 

 fessor of Horticulture at the Kansas Agricultural College, by whom he had 

 two children, who, with their mother, survive him. 



"Kobert F. Kedzie graduated in 1871, and for a short time thereafter turned 

 his attention to fruit culture, but afterwards became connected with the chem- 

 ical department of this College, where he labored efficiently during most of 

 the time for seven years. Among his labors while thus engaged is not a little 

 which will prove of permanent value to our State. For instance : he made 

 analyses of over thirty different samples of soils from different parts of the 

 State, the results of which work are now on exhibition, for the use of all who 

 have need of them, in the office of the State Commissioner of Immigration at 

 Detroit. Also twenty different samples of corn and mill stuffs, to determine 

 their relative food value ; forty-two samples of wheat, to determine proper 

 time for cutting — so far as that can be determined by chemical analysis; also 

 many samples of milk, honey, superphosphates, marls, etc., for various pur- 

 poses. He seemed peculiarly efficient in this work — the result, doubtless, no 

 less of his own persistent faithfulness than of the long and valued training 

 which he received from his father and from Professor Johnson, of Yale, and 

 Dr. Storer, of Harvard. 



"In 1880 he went with his friend. Prof. Frank A. Gulley, to the newly 

 organized Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi. It was an en- 

 terprise, as many of us regarded it, in the nature of an experiment. It 

 proved to be but a short one for poor Eobert Kedzie; but it may have been 

 very far from unsuccessful. The duties of his new position were perplexing 

 and arduous. The Chair of Chemistry, to which he was called, had no acces- 

 sories, no aids to instruction. He started in with nothing, but within a year 

 he had succeeded in organizing, it is said, the best laboratory in the Southern 

 States; this, too, beside conducting his classes in chemistry and physics, and 

 doing drudgery in mathematics. Yet, withal, he had the energy and pluck 

 to show himself of value in the public economy of the State by making use- 

 ful analyses of fertilizers used in the South, and of mineral waters, marls, 

 specimens of soil, and other things of the sort. Then, too, he founded in 

 that new institution a scienti6c association, patterned, as was his brother's in 

 the West, somewhat after our own Natural History Society — an institution 

 which thrived while he lived, but — like many fond hopes and bright anticipa- 

 tions — died when he died. 



"Full of high hope and happy under fairest prospects. Prof. Kedzie came 

 north, last Christmas time, to marry the girl he loved. Eeturning with his 

 bride to a happy home in the sunny Soutli, he was seized a week later with a 

 nervous fever from which, despite his strong constitution and stronger will, 

 he died Feb. 13, 1882. 



"He had been in the South but a short time, but he seems to have won 

 5 



