Biographical Sketch of George Brown Goode 509 



tion of Professor Baird and marked the author as one well 

 adapted for the direction of a great museum. For signal 

 success in such direction special qualifications are requisite. 

 Only some of them are a mind well trained in analytical as 

 well as synthetic methods, an artistic sense, critical ability, 

 and multifarious knowledge, but above all the knowledge of 

 men and how to deal with them. Perhaps no one has ever 

 combined, in more harmonious proportions, such qualifica- 

 tions than G. Brown Goode. In him the National Museum 

 of the United States, and the world at large have lost one 

 of the greatest of museum administrators." 



The most striking character of Doctor Goode's scientific 

 papers was perhaps their scholarly accuracy and good taste. 

 He never wrote a paper carelessly. He was never engaged 

 in any controversy, and he rarely made a statement which 

 had later to be withdrawn. Yet no one was more ready to 

 acknowledge an error, if one were made, and none showed 

 greater willingness to recognize the good work of others. 

 The literature even of the most out-of-the-way branch of 

 zoological research had a great fascination for him, and he 

 found in bibliography and in the records of the past workers 

 in science a charm scarcely inferior to that of original obser- 

 vation and research. In his later years administrative duties 

 occupied more and more of his time, restricting the opportu- 

 nities for his own studies. He seemed, however, to have as 

 great delight in the encouragement he could give to the work 

 of others. 



The great work of his life — " Oceanic Ichthyology " — was, 

 however, written during the period of his directorship of the 

 National Museum, and was published but a month before 

 his death. Almost simultaneous with this were other im- 

 portant publications of the National Museum, wliich were his 

 also in a sense, for they would never have been undertaken 







