10 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
as his own, but by embodying it as one 
of many items in some important gen- 
eralization. If one may so put it, he 
took the bricks of information turned 
out by many workers and combined 
them into an edifice of knowledge. As 
might perhaps be expected from one of 
his temperament, he was a “closet”’ 
rather than a “field” naturalist, al- 
though in his earlier days he visited the 
West Indies in the interests of Mr. D. 
Jackson Steward, whose shells! form 
part of the collections of the American 
Museum of Natural History. 
For many years his favorite morning 
haunt was the library of the United 
States National Museum, and later, the 
periodical room in the Smithsonian, 
where he read the standard scientific 
journals as soon as they were received, 
and noted the most recent discoveries 
in those lines in which he was especially 
interested. This extensive reading, 
coupled with a wonderfully retentive 
memory, made him an extraordinary 
source of information. He was a verita- 
ble storehouse of zoGlogical facts, which 
were freely placed at the disposal of 
anyone who really wished them. As a 
matter of detail, he probably had at his 
tongue’s end more scientific names of 
animals than any other living man — 
more probably than anyone will ever 
know again. This wide knowledge ren- 
dered easy such work as the technical 
parts of the zodlogical portion of the 
Century and Standard dictionaries. In 
the first-named work he was associated 
with Dr. Coues, and more than once 
sorely tried the patience of his colleague 
by his procrastinating habits,” for while 
Coues was a fluent talker and ready 
writer, he was also a hard and syste- 
1 Gill’s second published paper was on Cyprea 
notata, now considered a synonym of C. macula, 
from a specimen in the collection of D. W. Fergu- 
son, which is now in the collection of Columbia 
University. 
matic worker, as his many books and 
various papers bear witness. It is 
rather interesting to note that these two 
men, Coues and Gill, should have been 
so closely associated, for Coues probably 
did more than any other one man to 
popularize the study of birds and mam- 
mals, and Gill, though largely indirectly, 
did much to systematize and stabilize 
the technical side. As an example of 
Gill’s ultra-technical style may be cited 
his definition of Giraffide: 
A family of ruminant artiodactyl mam- 
mals, having the placenta polycotyledonary, 
the stomach quadripartite with developed 
psalterium, the cervical vertebree much 
elongated, the dorso-lumbars declivous back- 
wards and horns present only as frontal 
apophyses covered with integument. 
Coues read this and turning to Gill 
said, “That is n’t English, its Choctaw.” 
“No,” said Gill, “it is an exact defini- 
tion of the family.” 
For many years, more than twenty to 
the writer’s knowledge, Gill occupied a 
room on the west side of the big north 
tower of the Smithsonian, and for a long 
time Coues had an office on the opposite 
side, the two opening into a still larger 
intercommunicating room. Dr. Gill’s 
room like the girl’s workbasket, had a 
“place for everything and everything 
in it,’’— desk, chairs, shelves, floor — 
especially floor — were covered, aside 
from dust, with a miscellaneous collec- 
tion of books, pamphlets, old letters, 
skulls, skeletons and odds and ends of 
wearing apparel. During the summer 
this deposit, like a lava stream, flowed 
2The recent article in Science is in error in 
calling Dr. Gill the author of the zodlogical text 
of the Century Dictionary: Dr. Coues was the 
editor and wrote the major part of the definitions 
and chose the larger number of the illustrations; 
Dr. Gill was the scientific adviser, so to speak, 
and Coues relied largely upon him for accurate 
and technical information. Gill wrote a large 
share of the technical definitions, particularly 
those of the families and genera of mammals 
and fishes. — The Author. 
