448 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



welfare of the community was no small determining factor in 

 keeping him in Baltimore. From this interest in practical work 

 arose the labors of his pupils in studying and advancing the oyster 

 industries of New England, New Jersey, Oregon, Louisiana, the 

 Carolinas, and Maryland. 



But to appreciate the labors of Professor Brooks both in practical 

 and in theoretical knowledge we must know of his great physical 

 handicaps. Born with heart anatomy incomplete from the stand- 

 point of the average man, Brooks well knew his limitations in effort. 

 At college, he believed death would overtake him at any time with 

 exertion that his fellows might find of no harm. On his fortieth 

 birthday he congratulated himself to have brought it so far, since 

 at birth he was given but a few days of life as his probable fate. 

 No insurance company would take his risk and soon or later the 

 strain upon the internal adjustments of his organism must prove 

 too great. Yet when overcome by death, November 12, 1908, 

 after months of painful sickness, Professor Brooks had completed 

 more than sixty years of life with a congenital heart defect said to 

 be rarely carried to manhood. His colored drawings of stomato- 

 pods made in the heat of the Dry Tortugas in 1906, show no trem- 

 bling of the hand but the old love of form and of color. Amongst 

 his ancestors were seven who exceeded three score and ten; that 

 Professor Brooks' life fell short is no wonder. 



He was fond of pipe and cigars and at times chewed tobacco to 

 relieve some suppressed irritation and produce the necessary quiet. 

 He was by no means one who saved himself in work or who was 

 careful of exposure and of diet, so that in his life of rough living 

 at the shore he repeatedly was the prey to fevers and diseases as 

 well as subject to many of the minor ills of the flesh which he bore 

 with a fortitude that might to strangers seem indifference. 



Deeply interesting but baffling must be the association in 

 this man of such an incomplete and partly embryonic machinery 

 of life with great balance and equalization of mental traits and 

 the perennial spirit of child faith. But here is a special case 

 of the intricate problem of mind and body whose answer we 

 shall lack till, as Professor Brooks used to say, "we find out." 



