412 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



WILLI A:SI bullock CLARK (1860-1917) 



Fellow in Class II, Section 1. 191G 



As my old pupil and assistant John Mason Clarke has prepared a 

 full memorial for the National Academy and a fine appreciation for 

 the Bulletin of the Geological Society of this my other pupil and good 

 friend, who is now gone, I may set do\\Ti here more of personal reminis- 

 cence of our early work together and many later meetings. 



I remember visiting him at his fine home in the beautiful city of 

 Brattleboro where he was an only child, and driving with him up to 

 the large farm which overlooked the city, where he added country 

 life to town life during his school days. I remember his father, a 

 sturdy, respected and influential citizen, and his good mother whom 

 he seemed strongly to resemble. 



It was good old Massachusetts Bay stock on both sides, and his 

 ancestor Thomas Clarke was in PljTuouth in 1623. In those early 

 days the tribes spread down the Massachusetts and Connecticut shores 

 and up the Connecticut River, along "Puritan Street" as it was called, 

 because the straight route west was dangerous and the meadows of the 

 river did not require clearing. 



And so his father came to live in Brattleboro, and Clark fitted for 

 College in the high school of the town. 



When he came to study geology he was clear-headed, persistent and 

 enthusiastic. 



He mapped, as many of my boys have done, the surface geology 

 around the Golden Gate Pond in North Amherst, a name given by 

 Edward Hitchcock, and the solid geology of a section of the Holyoke 

 Range, and he did his work well. 



Near the end of senior year he came to me and announc(Ml that he 

 wished to take post-graduate work in geology at Amherst, and wished 

 my advice on the desirability of the plan, in view of the fact that he 

 was color blind. "How did you do your chemistry"? I asked. 



If he had a colored precipitate, he said, he showed it to a neighbor 

 with some remark as to its color which was generally corrected, and 

 he noted the correction carefully and memorized the same carefully. 

 and no one knew of the defective vision. I then told him he would 

 have to avoid mineralogy and center in paleontology. 



A few weeks b(>forc Commencement, T called him and told him that 



