The Days of a Man 1:1874 



naturalist 



mate, bound as we were by ties of friendship and 

 common scientific pursuits; and I was personally 

 under large obligations to him. 

 Gooie Although one of the chief builders of the science 



^"' ,. of Oceanic Ichthyology, Goode was equally interested 

 in the history of Zoology. He also delighted in 

 setting things in order; the striking characteristic 

 of his scientific papers was scholarly accuracy and 

 good taste. Among American naturalists he was 

 perhaps the most methodical and conscientious, and, 

 in his way, the most artistic. He never did any- 

 thing carelessly, never engaged in any controversy, 

 yet no one was more ready to acknowledge an 

 error or showed greater willingness to recognize the 

 good work of others. The most extended of my 

 own monographs, "The Fishes of North and Middle 

 America," ^ would never have been written except 

 for his repeated insistence and generous encourage- 

 ment.2 



He early became Baird's closest associate, and 

 the period embraced by the '70's, '8o's, and '90's, in 

 the course of which the influence of those two men 

 made itself generally felt in Washington, was in a 

 real sense the golden age of American governmental 

 science. And his death in 1896 virtually resulted 

 from overwork, mostly in connection with the 



1 See Chapter xxi, page 524. 



2 In 1879 Goode did me the honor of giving the name Jordandla to a genus 

 of handsome, chubby Httle kiUifish of the Florida rivers, now valued for aquarium 

 purposes. Such courtesies serve to recall to students the names of their prede- 

 cessors. 



In this regard, I have been honored beyond my deserts. Jordania is a rare, 

 handsome, and primitive sculpin of Puget Sound; Jordanicus, a pearl fish of 

 the South Seas, living in the body cavity of a sea cucumber; Jordanidia, a 

 predatory mackerel of the Black Current of Japan; Davidia, a filefish of 

 Brazil. 



L 126 2 



