Ce | McArerx, In Memoriam F. E. L. Beal. 293 
the Biological Society of Washington. Professor Beal, however, 
never tired of referring to one feature connected with its organiza- 
tion, that being, the perfection of the Constitution and By-Laws 
of the Club. Frank Hitchcock, then a member of the Biological 
Survey, later Postmaster General of the United States was on the 
Committee, and his persistence in pointing out ambiguities of 
language and dangers of misinterpretation, resulted in giving his 
fellow committeemen several evenings of stiff work on a document 
which they, otherwise, probably would have completed at one 
sitting. All were agreed, however, that the finished product was 
strictly iron-clad, and a veritable model of its kind. 
Professor Beal was a member also at one time of the Iowa 
Academy of Sciences, and for many years of the Massachusetts 
State Grange. 
Having thus sketched the career of Professor Beal, it remains to 
appraise it. In estimating the results of his life, we must not 
forget the early disadvantages: his being orphaned, his struggle 
for an education, the comparative lack of encouragement, and 
total absence of advisors qualified to help him choose a career. 
Yet the ambition and determination were there, and although 
most things came to him unusually late in life, he patiently forged 
ahead. Taking his life as a whole, the guiding star was love of 
nature. It was in him early and the ‘ Natural History of Selborne’ 
fixed it. Like I know not how many of us, he was also inspired 
by the writings of Hugh Miller. ‘The Testimony of the Rocks,’ 
and ‘The Old Red Sandstone,’ fired him with a zeal to callect 
fossils, but the metamorphic rocks about his early home yielded 
not one. It was not until he went to Iowa, as a teacher, that he 
saw fossils, and then he found them everywhere. They were in 
the sidewalks, in the building stones and even the roads were paved 
with broken crinoids; what a reward it was for his years of waiting! 
Professor Beal was a florist by profession and by choice; he never 
gave up working with flowers and he died among them. Hardly 
one of his diaries but was used to preserve small specimens of 
plants in which he was interested. 
Professor had the enviable experience of spending a day in a 
field excursion led by Louis Agassiz, and he never ceased to refer 
to it with the greatest pleasure. He was always an interested 
