16 Bashford Dean Memorial Volume 



cursions in the field through all the years of his active professorship at Columbia, until, 

 when he was appointed Curator of the Department of Reptiles and Fishes at the American 

 Museum of Natural History, the bibliography included some 20,000 titles. At this time 

 the Museum engaged an assistant for him to carry on this work which finally saw the 

 Hght in three volumes, in 1916, 1917, and 1923, after Charles R. Eastman, E. W. Gudger 

 and Arthur W. Henn had spent several years at work on various sides of it under Dean's 

 personal direction. It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance and usefulness 

 of this great work which makes readily accessible to all future students of the many 

 phases of ichthyology the treasury of knowledge gleaned by hundreds of workers in the 

 past. Together with his textbook on "Fishes, Living and Fossil," the ''Bibliography" ex' 

 emplified Dean's high ideals of service to other seekers after knowledge. In recognition 

 of the great value of this work, the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the Daniel 

 Giraud Elliot medal in 1923. 



CONNECTION WITH THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART 



1903-1928 



We have noted above that even as a small child Dean manifested a strong interest in 

 European armor. The incident of the helmet seen in the residence of a friend of the 

 family later led to the boy's unsuccessful effort to purchase this helmet at the executor's 

 sale of Mr. Gates' estate. We learn however that he purchased two beautiful daggers 

 from this collection and that this was the beginning of his collection of arms and armor 

 which was always his principal avocation and which finally became the ruling interest 

 of his life. 



Probably his early journeys in Europe, while he was studying the methods of oyster 

 culture practised in various countries, afforded him the opportunity to visit museums 

 where armor was exhibited and perhaps to attend occasional auction sales of these highly 

 prized objects. At any rate, by 1899 he was already in possession of a growing collec- 

 tion of European armor and weapons. During his journeys in Japan in 1900, 1901, and 

 1905, he accumulated an imposing series of Japanese armor and side arms, together with 

 much documentary evidence as to the history of each piece. A photograph which I 

 received from him in 1901 shows him arrayed in the panoply of a Japanese samurai. When 

 he returned from Japan, laden also with zoological treasures, his house was crowded with 

 suits of Japanese armor of many generations. He soon loaned these to the Metropolitan 

 Museum of Art and some of them were later purchased by the Museum for the gallery 

 of Japanese armor which he consented to arrange. The remainder of his collection, 459 

 pieces, he presented to the Museum in 1914. 



In 1903 appeared the first of his many papers on this subject, the "Catalogue 

 of the Loan Collection of Japanese Armor" in the Museum series of Handbooks. 

 In 1905 this was followed by the "Catalogue of European Arms and Armor," a hand' 

 book containing a most illuminating historical review of the development of armor 

 in Europe. He was appointed Honorary Curator of Arms and Armor in 1906 and from 



