1S92.] Ibl [Kuschenbcrgcr. 



the opinion of some of his warmest friends, and caused tliem on occasions 

 to jocosely say : "Oil! he is an invertebrate." 



While he was a bachelor his manner of living was properly economical, 

 and his savings at different times amounted to considerable sums ; but his 

 financiering ability or forecast seemed to be limited to this kind of hoard- 

 ing. At the time when speculation in petroleum was imagined to be a 

 sure road to fortune, he listened to a friend supposed to be knowing in the 

 field, invested in a petroleum company and lost $4000. On another occa- 

 sion he was lured by promises to invest in a silver mine and lost about 

 twice as much. Next he purchased stock of a certain railroad which from 

 that day never made a dividend, and sold it for about half its cost. 



During the first half of his life or more his attention was exclusively 

 given to anatomical and natural history pursuits. General literature or 

 popular diversions did not interest him in any considerable degree. His 

 diarj' kept while in Europe in 1848 mentions that he once attended the Hay- 

 market Theatre in Loudon, and that he passed one evening in Paris at the 

 Theatre du Palais Royal. But galleries of paintings and sculpture attracted 

 his attention. To a friend who presented him a poem years ago he said : 

 "I never read poetry. It seems to me such a round-abound way of 

 expressing ideas." And to another he said he did not understand how 

 anybody could read "rhyming stuff." But in the last decade of life, 

 when age and experience had tamed his energies, and egoism was less 

 exacting, his tastes changed. He read with pleasure certain poetic compo- 

 sitions, which friends commended, and now and then a novel. Theatrical 

 amusement often attracted him, and he was sometimes pleased to hear 

 the music of his daughter's piano in the parlor while he was engaged in 

 his study. He daily read newspapers, and, as a good citizen, voted at elec- 

 tions of city. State and United States officers. 



In some respects he resembled Charles Darwin. Matthew Arnold says: 

 "Mr. Darwin once owned to a friend that, for his part, he did not experi- 

 ence the necessity of two things, which most men find so necessary to 

 them — religion and poetry ; science and the domestic affections he thought 

 were enougli."* 



In his autobiography Mr. Darwin says: "For many years I cannot 

 endure to read a line of poetry; I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, 

 and have found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have almost 

 lost my taste for pictures and music. * * * My mind seems to have 

 become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of a large collec- 

 tion of facts." 



Dr. Leidy, however, sought chiefly to ascertain facts ; he did not attempt 

 to deduce general laws from them. 



He accepted, without reserve, all the theories of evolution, etc., of Mr. 

 Darwin, with whom he had correspondence, but their religious views were 

 very different. 



* Discourses in America. By Matthew Arnold. Macmillan & Co., London, 1685, p. 113. 



