AN APPRECIATION OF THEODORE NICHOLAS GILL 11 
slowly eastward until by fall all three 
rooms were filled and Dr. Gill was work- 
ing at Coues’s desk. Here and in the 
Museum library Dr. Gill’s papers were 
mainly prepared, for even in his later 
days he rarely made use of a stenog- 
rapher. Gill’s astonishing knowledge of 
names and his exactness in matters of 
nomenclature made him extremely help- 
ful in the bestowal of names upon new 
species, and it was customary for one 
about to christen some newly discovered 
beast, bird or fish to ask him if the 
proposed name had been previously 
used, a procedure that saved much time 
and many synonyms. He excelled in 
tracing the history of some much de- 
scribed species through the mazes of 
literature in which it had wandered, and 
delighted to show that what Aristotle is 
supposed to have called some animal 
was really quite a different creature. 
He was the first president of the 
Biological Society of Washington and 
hence a life member of the council; he 
was also an almost constant attendant 
at its meetings. As the present special- 
ization of societies had not even begun, 
the members of this society represented 
many branches of science and the papers 
presented covered a remarkably wide 
range of subjects, varying from technical 
to popular, and from Protozoa to Pri- 
mates. 
It mattered not what paper was 
presented, it came to be expected that if 
Dr. Gill did not lead the discussion, he 
would participate in it, and when at the 
close of some paper the hearers turned 
expectantly toward Dr. Gill, they were 
rarely disappointed. He was a severe, 
one might almost say merciless critic, 
not from any particular personal animus, 
but because he expected an exact state- 
ment of fact. 
While the majority of Gill’s papers 
were systematic, yet on occasion he 
could write most entertainingly, and not 
only did he have a vast fund of informa- 
tion on which to draw, but the reader 
had the satisfaction of feeling that he 
could rely upon what he was being told. 
His contributions to zodgeography were 
numerous also and the subject was dealt 
with in at least two of his presidential 
addresses. 
Among the more important deductions 
that he made were the recognition of the 
claim of the Elasmobranchs to a position 
of the “highest” rank and of the purely 
artificial nature of the groups Carinatie 
and Ratite in birds. He accurately 
defined and established on a sound 
structural basis seven orders of fishes, 
to say nothing of genera, and was prac- 
tically the first to suggest that the 
curious little fishes termed Leptocephalus 
were larval forms of eels. 
As an example of the estimation in 
which the work of Dr. Gill was held by 
fellow scientists, one cannot do better 
than to quote an extract from David 
Starr Jordan’s Guide to the Study of 
Fishes read by Dr. Smith at the Testi- 
monial Dinner to Dr. Gill: 
Theodore Nicholas Gill is the keenest 
interpreter of taxonomic facts yet known in 
the history of ichthyology. He is the author 
of a vast number of papers, the first bearing 
date of 1858, touching almost every group 
and almost every phase of relation among 
fishes. His numerous suggestions as to 
classification have been usually accepted in 
time by other authors, and no one has had a 
clearer perception than he of the necessity of 
orderly methods in nomenclature. 
And Dr. Jordan further wrote: 
In my scientific work I have owed more 
to the critical ability of Dr. Gill and his clear 
insight in matters of classification and ge- 
neric relations than to any other man whatso- 
ever. In all the long history of science there 
has been no one who has had this unique 
quality of being able to see through unim- 
portant things to the real heart in biological 
classification as has Dr. Gill. 
