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OBITUARY. 



GEORGE BROWN GOODE. 



Born in New Albany, Ind., February 13, 1851. Died at 



Washington, D.C, September 6, 1896. 



ON the 7th of September, fifty years ago, the Regents of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution met for the first time ; on the same day of the 

 present year they were to have met and commemorated the event, 

 while in our October number we had hoped to pubhsh a special account 

 of the Institution and especially of the National Museum, by the 

 assistant secretary, the director of the museum, Dr. Brown Goode. 

 But he who should have summoned the Regents died on the day 

 before, and the pen that should have written for us had been laid 

 down for the last time. We allude to this kindly promise to ourselves, 

 for it was typical of the man. Eminent though he was as a scientific 

 investigator, it was chiefly by helping others that he advanced science. 

 After graduating in 1870 at the Wesleyan University, Middletown, 

 Conn., he was led by Professor Baird to help the United States Fish 

 Commission as a volunteer, and subsequently became officially con- 

 nected with it. He was United States Commissioner to the Fisheries 

 Exhibitions in Berlin (1880) and London (1883). Among his chief 

 works in this connection were " The Game Fishes of the United 

 States," 1879, " The Fisheries and Fishing Industries of the United 

 States," 1884, " American Fishes," 1887, and, in co-operation with 

 Dr. T. H. Bean, the great work recently published on Ocean 

 Ichthyology, a treatise on the deep-sea and pelagic fishes of the 

 world. It was in 1873 that Brown Goode became attached to the 

 Smithsonian Institution, and an opportunity of showing his mettle 

 came three years later, when, owing to the illness of Professor Baird, 

 the charge of the Smithsonian Exhibit at the Philadelphia Exhibition 

 (1876) devolved largely on him. The experience thus gained led to 

 his being placed in charge of the national exhibits at the exhibitions 

 in New Orleans, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, and, quite recently, 

 Atalanta. Here, and in the National Museum, of which he was 

 made assistant director in 1881 and director, along with the assistant 

 secretaryship to the Smithsonian, in 1888, his remarkable genius for 

 museum organisation and administration was displayed. He led the 

 revolution against the old dry-as-dust, lumber-room practice of 

 museum arrangement, and the principle that guided him was thus 

 expressed : " The exhibition of the future will be an exhibition of 

 ideas rather than of objects, and nothing will be deemed worthy of 



