580 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



law and entered the office of S. W. and R. A. Gaines, a well-known 

 law firm of that period. The latter partner had married a sister of 

 James Darrel Gill, and was therefore a connection interested in 

 Theodore's success in life. 



His extraordinary gift of memory doubtless enabled him to absorb 

 the essentials of legal learning, but an overpowering tendency toward 

 the study of nature greatly abridged his law studies and he never 

 applied for admission to the bar. His visits to the fish market be- 

 came more constant, while the adjacent water front sheltered sailing 

 vessels from all quarters of the world, where sailors with shells and 

 curios were daily to be encountered. His grandfather's family being 

 residents of Newfoundland, where the fisheries were of the first im- 

 portance, he kept himself informed through everything he could 

 reach of matters relating to the subject. 



The pursuit of scientific studies at that period and for a long time 

 afterwards offered no prospect of a self-supporting career. Though 

 there are no data on record it is reasonably certain that Gill's family 

 must have looked with doubt, if not absolute disapproval, on his de- 

 votion to studies which did not promise even a bare living. At all 

 events with a young family from his second marriage to bring up 

 and educate Gill's father was not in a position to support him in an 

 unproductive profession. 



He was therefore soon left dependent on his own resources, which 

 for years were barely sufficient to maintain his existence. 



According to Dr. Gill himself we find him about this time seeking 

 and obtaining from the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Phila- 

 delphia a scholarship which yielded him the meager means of pur- 

 suing his studies in natural history and thus coming in contact with 

 a group of men who helped to lay the foundations of American 

 science. This grant, he stated to a friend some time before his death, 

 was the deciding factor in his resolve to devote himself to scientific 

 studies. 



He became acquainted with most of those who at that time in 

 New York were interested in natural history, especially J. Carson 

 Brevoort, whose zoological library was then reputed to be the best 

 in the United States, and D. Jackson Stewart, a wealthy amateur, 

 whose great collection of shells has finally found a resting place in 

 the American Museum of Natural History. 



About this time Dr. William Stimpson, the distinguished student 

 of invertebrate zoology, while in New York heard amusing refer- 

 ences to a young student of law who kept a horse's skull under his 

 desk at the office where he was studying. Investigating this phe- 

 nomenon further, he made Gill's acquaintance. Partly as a result of 

 Stimpson's report to Prof. Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, the latter, always interested in young students of nature, 



