392 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



prepared for college. In due time young Goode was matriculated 

 in Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he 

 graduated in 1870, at the too early age of nineteen. 



The fixed curriculum of the college gave him little opportunity 

 for the studies in which he was chiefly interested, and his standing 

 in the conventional branches on which the higher education was 

 then supposed to depend was not unusually high. He was, how- 

 ever, regarded as "a man exceptionally promising for work" in 

 natural history. 



Goode spent part of the year of 1870 in graduate work in 

 Harvard, and there fell under the stimulating influence of the 

 greatest of teachers of science, Louis Agassiz. Before the year 

 was over he was recalled to Middletown to take charge of the 

 Museum of Natural Science then just erected by Orange Judd. 

 His work in Judd Hall was a prelude to his reorganization of the 

 National Museum in Washington, an institution which will 

 always show in its classification and arrangement the traces of 

 his master hand. 



In 1872, he first met Professor Baird in Eastport, Maine, and 

 in 1873, while at the meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, in Portland, Maine, he renewed this 

 acquaintance. Professor Baird with his characteristic insight 

 into the ambitions and possibilities of promising young men, 

 one of his notable qualities, invited Goode to aid in the work 

 of the newly organized Fish Commission. At that time Pro- 

 fessor Baird was Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, in charge of the National Museum, and also United States 

 Fish Commissioner. The organizations were managed in similar 

 fashion and all their activities directed to the same high ends. 

 Very soon Goode was brought into the service of them both. 

 In the summer he was employed by the Fish Commission in in- 

 vestigations and explorations along the Atlantic Coast. In the 

 winter he divided his time between Wesleyan University and the 

 National Museum, until the former institution was reluctantly 

 compelled, in 1877, wholly to give him up. Till that date his only 

 compensation for work done in Washington was found in dupli- 



