GOODl^. AS A NATURALIST. 



By Hknry Fairfield Osborn, 

 DaCosta Professor of Zoology, Columbia University. 



The designation ' ' naturalist ' ' was one which Goode richly earned and 

 which he held most dear, and our deep sorrow is that his activity as a 

 naturalist extended only over a quarter of a century. We are cheered 

 by the thought that he was a man of whom no adverse word can ever be 

 spoken either in science or in character. We think of both at this time, 

 because in him the man and the profession were inseparable and con- 

 stantly interacting. His .scientific virtues were of the order rare as the 

 Christian virtues, and we can not thoroughly understand his vScientific 

 career unless we understand him as a man. Errors of judgment, mis- 

 leading tenets, and adherence to false hypotheses among some of the 

 most gifted of our professional ancestors have arisen as often from defect 

 of principle and from personal prejudices as from defect of knowledge. 

 We see in our friend, on the other hand, that the high standard of scien- 

 tific achievement was constantly parallel with and very largely the out- 

 growth of a high standard of personal character and motive. 



In brief, the work of the true naturalist is ever lighted by the four 

 lamps, of love, of truth, of breadth, and of appreciation, and all of these 

 shone brightly upon the path of Goode. His love of nature was inborn, 

 predetermining his career, and so far surpassing his self-interest we fear 

 it is only too true that he sacrificed his life for the diffusion of natural 

 truth. So far as I know, he never entered a scientific controversy and 

 was never under temptation to warp or deflect facts to support an 

 hypothesis; yet he was incapable of tampering with truth under any 

 circumstances which might have arisen. His presidential address of 1887 

 before the Biological Society of Washington showed him as scrupulous not 

 to overestimate as he was eager not to underestimate the existing status 

 of American science. While largely cultivated by wide experience in 

 contact with nature and men, his breadth of view was certainly innate. 

 If Goode had a fault, it was that his interests were too numerous and his 

 sympathies too broad. He displayed not only a warm appreciation of 

 those around him and an enthusiasm for contemporary research, but an 

 exceptional sense of the close bonds between the present and the past — 

 NAT MUS 97, PT 2 2 17 



