HENRY WHEATLAND. 363 



Of all Mr, Brimmer's public services, if we are to make the invidi- 

 ous task of selection, the highest place may be given to his work in 

 the Art Museum. Perhaps other men could have filled his place in 

 other institutions equally well ; in this he was without a possible 

 rival. By disposition and training alike, he was fitted to be a perfect 

 judge and patron of fine art ; and if Boston is ever to keep her head 

 above the overwhelming gulf of pretension and mediocrity that is pour- 

 ing over the country in matters of art, she will owe her salvation to 

 him more than to any single man. This work elicited from him other 

 work of exquisite power, for which his adaptation had hardly been 

 suspected. He delivered one or two addresses on the importance of 

 the fine arts, which were not merely sound, elegant, and manly, but 

 rose in more than one passage to thrilling and convincing eloquence of 

 a kind rare indeed in these days. 



This Academy, like the community, was the better for his member- 

 ship, and his place will long be unsupplied. 



1896 William Everett. 



HENRY WHEATLAND. 



Henry Wheatland was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 

 1845. He was born in Salem, January 11, 1812, and died there, 

 February 27, 1893. His father was Richard Wheatland, born in 

 Wareham, Dorset County, England, in 1762, who came to America 

 in 1783. For several years he sailed from the port of Salem as com- 

 mander of vessels in the India trade. In 1801 he retired from the 

 sea and became one of the prosperous India merchants who helped to 

 make the fame of the old town in the palmy days of its commerce. 

 In 1796 Captain Wheatland was married to his second wife; and 

 Henry was the sixth and youngest child of this marriage. As a boy 

 he was of a delicate constitution, and, being naturally disposed to study, 

 his parents had him fitted for college in the Salem schools. At the 

 age of sixteen he entered Harvard, and was graduated in the class of 

 1832. His taste for natural history was evidently formed in boyhood, 

 for we find that in the last year of his college course he was active in 

 the formation of " The Harvard Linnean, " of which college society 

 he was the Secretary. The Constitution of this society, as he wrote it, 

 is among his papers. This was probably the immediate precursor of the 

 present Harvard Natural History Society, which was formed in 1837. 

 On leaving college he returned to Salem and became an active 

 worker in the Essex County Natural History Society and the Essex 

 Historical Society. 



