William Keith Brooks. 



William Keith Brooks was born at Cleveland, O., March 25, 

 1848, and died at his home, " Brightside," near Baltimore, November 

 12, 1908. His parents were born in Vermont, but their ancestors 

 had lived for many generations at or near Concord, Mass., the first 

 of the name having come to America from England prior to 1634. 

 Young Brooks received his early education in the public schools of 

 Cleveland, and he afterward entered Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y., 

 where, he says, " I learned to study, and, I hope, to profit by but 

 not to blindly follow, the writings of that great thinker on the prin- 

 ciples of science, George Berkeley." He spent two years at Hobart, 

 where he took high honors, and then entered the junior class at 

 Williams College. Here he distinguished himself as a thorough and 

 independent scholar, and is said to have been one of the most bril- 

 liant students in mathematics Williams had ever known. In 1870 he 

 received the degree of bachelor of arts and was elected to Phi Beta 

 Kappa. 



After his graduation his father took him into mercantile business- 

 with himself, intending that he should become his successor, but 

 such work was distasteful to young Brooks and he soon abandoned 

 it and became a teacher in a boys school at Niagara, N. Y. When 

 he left college he was undecided whether to devote himself to 

 mathematics, to Greek, or to biology, for he was unusually proficient 

 in all of these subjects. He was an enthusiastic naturalist; even 

 as a boy he had given much attention to fresh-water aquaria and 

 to the habits of animals, and he had published some of his observa- 

 tions; with one of his friends he had constructed a microscope and 

 with other associates he had organized a class in natural history; 

 he had also read many books on natural history and was intensely 

 interested in evolution and Darwinism. He finally decided to de- 

 vote himself to biology, largely influenced, we may imagine, by the 

 philosophical importance of this subject. 



