THE AUK: 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 

 ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol. xxxii. October, 1915. No. 4. 



IN MEMORIAM: THEODORE NICHOLAS GILL. 1 



Born New York City Mar. 21, 1837; Died Washington 

 D. C, Sept. 25, 1914. 



BY T. S. PALMER. 



Plate XXVI. 



Theodore Nicholas Gill, 'Master of Taxonomy' — such was 

 the characterization by Dr. David Starr Jordan of the man whom 

 Prof. Spencer F. Baird called the most learned, and Prof. G. Brown 

 Goode described as the most erudite and philosophic of American 

 naturalists. His interest in various subjects was as great as his 

 breadth of view and extended not only throughout the field of 

 zoology but also into paleontology, philosophy, language, and other 

 fields of human interest. Questions of Greek grammar, conchology, 

 ichthyology, mammalogy, nomenclature, osteology, and the evo- 

 lution and geographic distribution of organisms living or extinct 

 all engaged his attention. He was equally at home in biography 

 or biology, etymology or entomology, and among mollusks or 

 mammals. 



Theodore N. Gill, son of James Darrell and Elizabeth Vosburgh 

 Gill, was born in New York City, March 21, 1837, and was edu- 

 cated in private schools and under private tutors. He took no 



1 Address delivered at the thirty-third Stated Meeting of the American Orni- 

 thologists' Union, San Francisco, Calif., May 18, 1915. 



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