4o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which he had cast his lot, he interested himself in the establishment 

 of such educational influences as that of a public aquarium, and it 

 was through no fault of the sower that the seed laboriously sown 

 fell upon stony ground. In the winter of 1880 he gave a course 

 of lectures and of laboratory work for teachers in the schools of 

 Baltbnore. 



Again, his early studies of the development of the oyster (for 

 which he was awarded the medal of the Societe d' Acclimatisation 

 of Paris in 1883), his discovery that the American oyster could be 

 reared like fish from artificially fertilized eggs, since he found it 

 to have a different life history from its European fellow, led him 

 to realize the greater possibilities that awaited our oyster indus- 

 tries when they should be based upon scientific fact. Living amid 

 a population dependent to no small extent upon these industries. 

 Professor Brooks threw himself with enthusiasm into the problem 

 of warding off' the ruin that comes to every enterprise expanding 

 faster than its capital is replenished, and eagerly sought the means 

 to magnify without deterioration so important a factor in the ex- 

 istence of the Commonwealth. As chairman of the Oyster Com- 

 mission appointed by the General Assembly of Maryland in 1882, 

 he drew up the long, detailed, and well-illustrated report, issued in 

 1884, which set forth the condition of the oyster beds in the Chesa- 

 peake Bay and their deterioration from overwork, and suggested 

 a legislative remedy in the form of a bill designed to remove this 

 industry from that primitive, barbaric stage in which our communal 

 ownership of migrant birds and fish still remains, and to place it 

 upon the secure basis of personal ownership underlying other live- 

 stock business. But it is difficult to change the customs of centu- 

 ries' standing, and prophets rarely see the fulfillment of their predic- 

 tions. Many lectures and the issue of a popular book — The Oyster, 

 1891 — were necessary labors assumed by Professor Brooks before 

 the public mind was educated to some appreciation of the nature 

 of the problem, and the fruits of his labors are yet to be matured 

 and gathered. 



But it is not so much by discovery of new facts or by aid to 

 the community in which one may chance to live that a man exerts 

 his best influence upon mankind; rather by his success in inspir- 

 ing others to see whatever of good there may be in his point of view 

 and method of attack upon old problems, that his followers may 

 keep alive and enlarge what he stands for in the growth of civili- 

 zation. As a teacher Professor Brooks has exerted a powerful in- 

 fluence by the stimulus of example in his whole-hearted devotion 

 to research, by originality of suggestion, and by his clear intuition 

 of the essential factors in morphological problems. Convinced 



