JESSE WALTER FEWKES ' 



By John R. Swantun and F. II. II. Roberts, Jr. 



[With 1 plate] 



The death of Jesse Walter Fewkes removes one who was an out- 

 standinf]^ influence in the formative period of American archeology, 

 particularly the archeology of our great Southwest. ^le wo' born 

 at Newton, Mass., on November 14, 1850, of parents whose i*..cestral 

 lines in America extended back to the seventeenth century. In 1871 

 he entered Harvard and he graduated four years later with honors in 

 natural history, besides being elected to membership in Phi Beta 

 Kappa. 



In 1874, while he was still an undergraduate, two papers on elec- 

 trical subjects were published by him, but the year before he had 

 come under the influence of Louis Agassiz in the latter's school at 

 Penikcse Island, Buzzards Bay, and this experience probably led 

 him to turn his atteniion wholly to zoology. At any rate he took up 

 graduate work in natural history and, after receiving the degrees of 

 A. M. and Ph. D. in 1877, he continued zoological studies at Leipzig 

 under Rudolph Lueckart between 1878 and 1880. Later he spent 

 several months in Naples and at Villa Franca on the south coast of 

 France as holder of the Harris fellowship. After his return to 

 America he received an appointment as assistant in the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology at Harvard where, from 1881 to 1889, he had 

 charge of the collections of the lower invertebrata. In 1881 he ac- 

 companied Alexander Agassiz to Key West and the Dry Tortugas 

 for the study of marine life and two years later he visited the Ber- 

 mudas on a similar quest. Every summer, from 1884 to 1887, he was 

 assistant in charge of the younger Agassiz's marine laboratory at 

 Newport, R. I., but in the spring of 1887 he pursued scientific studies 

 at Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Monterey, California, as a guest 

 of Augustus Homenway, of Bo.ston. and in the summer of 1888 he 

 studied in Paris and engaged in field work in marine zoology at 

 Prof. Lacaze Duthier's zoological station at RoscolF, Brittany. 



Doctor Fewkes's visit to California proved to be a turning point 

 in his career, for it was then that he came in contact with the culture 



' Tbfs article Is expanded from one by John R. Swanton published In Science, Joly 4, 

 1930. Vol. LXXII, No. 1853. 



609 



