582 ANNUAL BEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



of Prof. Henry; Dr. William Stimpson, who was working on the 

 invertebrata of the North Pacific Exploring Expedition under Ring- 

 gold and Rodgers; and August Schonborn, artist, who made most 

 exquisite silver-point drawings of Stimpson's North Pacific crus- 

 taceans. 



These formed an informal association known as the Megatherium 

 Club, whose members took meals together and foregathered with 

 Stimpson and Kennicott for joyous evenings. The constant fluctua- 

 tion in attendance, due to the coming and going between Washington 

 and the fields of exploration in the West, tended toward disintegra- 

 tion, and the club virtually dissolved in a few years. 



At the invitation of Prof. Henry, Gill came to the Institution in 

 1861, and during the following winter was appointed to the charge 

 of its great scientific library, which had been collected and organized 

 by that eminently capable librarian. Prof. C. C. Jewett. This post 

 he held until 1866, when, at the instance of Prof. Henry, the Smith- 

 sonian books were deposited as a special collection in the Library 

 of Congress. Gill went with the books to the Capitol as Assistant 

 Librarian of Congress, and finally became senior assistant, retaining 

 that post until 1874. All this time he had retained his quarters in 

 the Smithsonian building, to which he hastened as soon as the usual 

 office hours in the library were over. There most of his scientific 

 work was done in the midst of an accumulation of books, pamphlets, 

 unfinished manuscript, and debris of various kinds, piled on shelves, 

 desk, and floor in a manner to strike terror to any housewife. How- 

 ever, old James Gant, the colored dignitary who "looked after the 

 young gentlemen " and prided himself on having been body servant 

 to a former President of the United States, was very willing to 

 obey the injunction that nothing should be touched, and the accumu- 

 lations continued for many years. 



Finally, when the biological collections were transferred with their 

 curators to the new National Museum building in 1909, and the room 

 occupied by Gill formed one of those assigned to the staff of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology, the professor was obliged to move to other 

 quarters. He regarded the ancient heaps with dismay, and relieved 

 himself of responsibility by presenting them, with all their contents, 

 to the library of the Smithsonian Institution. 



The earlier publications of Gill appeared in the annals of the New 

 York Lyceum of Natural History, of which he became a member in 

 1858. In November, 1860, he was elected a correspondent of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and for several years 

 his papers, appearing in rapid succession, formed a large part of the 

 academy's volumes of proceedings. With the establishment of the 

 American Journal of Conchology in 1865, and of the American 

 Naturalist two years later, an opportunity was utilized for printing 



