392 Palmer, In Memoriam: Theodore Nicholas Gill. [bet" 



regular college course and although he studied law was never ad- 

 mitted to the bar. At an early age he became interested in natural 

 history and especially in fishes which afterward formed the subject 

 of his special studies. In the markets of New York which he fre- 

 quently visited he was able to examine some of the rarer species 

 which were brought in from time to time by commercial fishermen. 



At the age of 20 in the winter of 1857-58 he took his first extended 

 field trip, visiting Barbados, Trinidad and other islands in the West 

 Indies where he collected shells and other specimens for Mr. D. 

 Jackson Stewart. The results of this trip were worked up chiefly 

 in the library of Mr. J. Carson Brevoort and appeared in the Annals 

 of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York and the Proceed- 

 ings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. It was 

 probably in the Brevoort library, then one of the best of its kind 

 in this country, that he laid the foundations of that broad and 

 intimate knowledge of books which in later years became such 

 a distinguishing characteristic. His second collecting trip, and 

 apparently the only other extended field trip he ever undertook, 

 was made in the summer of 1859 to Newfoundland. 



About 1860, Gill came to Washington, D. C, and took up his 

 residence in the national capital, which was henceforth to be his 

 home and which for more than half a century was destined to be 

 the scene of his literary and scientific activities. Here he found 

 congenial surroundings and settled into a life which almost never 

 took him into the field and seldom involved trips farther than New 

 York or Boston, 1 but his interests were world wide and were not 

 measured by his travels. Dum domi mansit orbem pervagabatur 

 (while he remained at home he wandered throughout the world). 

 It is interesting to note that Gill reached Washington just about 

 the outbreak of the Civil war but the events of those stirring times 

 seemed to have had little effect on his career. Here he met Pro- 

 fessor Baird and others who were then prominent in scientific work. 

 Baird was Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and 

 had but recently completed his great works on the mammals and 

 birds of the Pacific Railroad Surveys. Coues was a student in 



1 It is said that at one time he was offered an attractive position by Professor 

 Agassiz at Cambridge, but decided not to leave Washington. 



