SKETCH OF WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS. 407 



covered by the Spaniards and treated as part of the live stock of 

 the New World and soon annihilated, leaving but a few bones, and, 

 as Professor Brooks tells us, our familiar and pleasant word " ham- 

 mocks," as evidences of their having been. 



Coming to maturity in the period of general acceptance of the 

 Darwinian hypothesis of organic evolution, Professor Brooks was 

 naturally deeply influenced, and no one who has read his works can 

 doubt his allegiance to natural selection as a powerful factor in the 

 formation of the present order of living things. In the American 

 Naturalist for 1877 he published the first outlines of a provisional 

 hypothesis of pangenesis that sought to " combine the hypotheses 

 of Owen, Spencer, and Darwin in such a way as to escape the objec- 

 tions to which each is in itself liable, and at the same time to retain 

 all that renders them valuable." In 1883 the same hypothesis — 

 that variations are perpetuated chiefly through the male line by 

 special gemmules, and that the female is essentially conservative 

 — was elaborated in book form under the title of The Law of He- 

 redity. 



Thenceforth, in intervals of research work. Professor Brooks 

 has contributed to various periodicals, notably the Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly, such essays upon kindred topics as spontaneously 

 arose in his mind in connection with current work here and abroad. 

 Some of these of a general philosophical interest have been incor- 

 porated with lectures, originally given to students in Baltimore, as 

 The Foundations of Zoology, brought out this year by the Macmillan 

 Company as Volume Y of the Columbia University Biological Series. 

 This, it will be noted, is dedicated " To Hobart College, where I 

 learned to study, and, I hope, to profit by, but not blindly to follow, 

 the writings of that great thinker on the principles of science, 

 George Berkeley," and its keynote might be said to be difiicult to 

 hold, expressing the standpoint of one who says " The proof that 

 there is no necessary antagonism between mechanical explanations 

 of human life and belief in volition and duty and moral responsi- 

 bility seems to me to be very simple and easy to understand." 



Though thus active in pushing forward the limit of fact and 

 theory in the domain of pure science. Professor Brooks has not 

 shirked the duty that falls to every member of society, but has 

 labored earnestly to build a sound basis for immediate practical ap- 

 plication of zoological research. In 1876 he organized a summer 

 zoological laboratory for teachers and others in Cleveland, with 

 the co-operation of two other young Clevelanders — A. H. Tuttle, 

 now Professor of Biology in the University of Virginia, and I. B. 

 Comstock, Professor of Geology in the University of Arizona. 



Identifying himself with the interests of the community in 



