618 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1930 



working with my father, when at school acting as janitor of the building, and 

 in later years, from 18 to 21, working in the shoe factories. My education 

 up to the time I was 21 was necessarily scrappy, but in the winter of 1876 

 I entered the University of Maine (then the small and struggling Maine State 

 College), working my own way as in years previous and graduating in chemis- 

 try with the degree of B. S. in 1879. Later I received the honorary degrees 

 of M. S. (1883) and Ph. D. (1889) from the same institution. 



During the winter of 1876 I taught school at what is known as the Jackson 

 district in Minot Center and during the vacations of the subsequent winters 

 at East North Yarmouth, all in the State of Maine, receiving in the first 

 Instance $25 a month and board, and in the second, $30 a month and board 

 as remuneration. I taught everything asked for — to students ranging from 

 those who were sent to keep them from under their mother's feet to those 

 who were as old and several sizes larger than I was myself. Along with the 

 a, b, c's, I taught English, grammar, French, algebra, and geometry, and it 

 was even suggested that I add singing as an extra course! Since I felt that 

 a line should be drawn somewhere I drew it there. 



Immediately after graduating in 1879 Merrill became assistant to 

 Prof. W. O. Atwater in Wesleyan University at Middletown, Conn., 

 working with him on the chemistry of foods. It was while here 

 that he made the acquaintance of America's greatest pioneer in mu- 

 seum administration, Dr. G. Brown Goode, a graduate of that uni- 

 versity and some time curator of its museum collections, but at this 

 time in charge of the United States National Museum. They were 

 attracted to each other at once and it was this meeting, together 

 with an earlier recommendation, that had much to do with Merrill's 

 subsequent appointment in the National Museum. In the winter of 

 1880-81 Merrill was connected with the Fisheries Bureau at Wash- 

 ington, D. C, and in the following July was transferred by Doctor 

 Goode to the staff of the geological department of the National 

 Museum as aid to Dr. George W. Hawes, who had in 1880 been 

 appointed curator of geology. As we shall see, it was the latter who 

 started Merrill on his geological career, and mainly in the line of 

 petrology. 



In the sketch above referred to, Merrill says that he must have 

 been born with a fondness for natural history, but adds : 



If in my work there may have been any one controlling influence it must 

 be attributed to the summers of my childhood which I spent with my [maternal] 

 grandfather. He was a man of far more scholarly standing than the majority 

 of clergymen In like situations. In the parlor of his house, on the mantel over 

 the fireplace, I remember there stood a stack of narrow pine shelves on which 

 were placed from time to time such objects as were sent to him by missionary 

 friends from heathen lands and such " natural curiosities " as came to hand. 

 Among these last were found a long-horned, adult form of the pine tree borer, 

 Monharmnus confusor, and a hideous lace-winged " helldiver," Corydalis comuta. 

 Later I myself added many insect forms, including the big luna-moth which was 

 esteemed a great treasure. But amongst the inorganic forms there was a curved 

 piece of stone, like a fragment of a saucer, or possibly the segment of a sphere. 

 There was nothing remarkable about it had it not been that there rested In 



