° 1920 J Henshaw, In Memoriam: William Brewster. lo 



It will surprise many who are familiar with Brewster's writings 

 and have admired his smoothly flowing periods and felicitous 

 methods of expression, to know that he wrote only with great diffi- 

 culty and labor. Whatever success he achieved as an author, 

 and much may be said of the excellence of his literary work, was 

 done with much pain and travail. The standard he set for himself 

 was very high, and frequently, in order to attain it, he had to 

 reshape or rewrite an article several times before he was willing to 

 commit it to print, and then usually not without doubts and pain- 

 ful misgivings. At times, too, he had to contend with ill health 

 which, often for considerable periods, made writing, never easy, 

 doubly difficult or impossible. Thus was prevented the preparation 

 of many papers he had planned to write and publish. Under the 

 circumstances the wonder is not that he published so little but 

 that he published so much. His wife rendered important aid in his 

 literary efforts, not only by timely encouragement and wise criticism, 

 but by typewriting much of his manuscript. This cooperation he 

 greatly prized and it was a direct and an important stimulus to 

 production. 



Though he never wrote many reviews Brewster, nevertheless, 

 was a model reviewer, being careful, fair and conscientious, always 

 weighing the merits and demerits of a book with scrupulous impar- 

 tiality. That he had the capacity of a successful editor is not open 

 to doubt as was shown when he was chosen to edit Minot's ' Land 

 and Game Birds of New England.' In dealing with the book he 

 showed wise restraint in the use of the editorial pen, and left the 

 author, so far as possible, to tell his story in his own way. On 

 almost every page, however, he made important annotations in the 

 form of foot notes, which, it is not too much to say, added greatly 

 to the value of the work. His total scientific output amounted to 

 upwards of three hundred papers of all kinds, some of them, as his 

 'Birds of Lower California' and 'Birds of the Cambridge Region,' 

 being volumes of considerable size and forming notable contribu- 

 tions to faunal literature. 



His productivity was greatest in the period from 1876 to 1900, 

 after which he produced much less, though some of his most import- 

 ant publications appeared after 1900. He published practically 

 everything he wrote in scientific journals, and apparently was never 



