A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE 15 



on the proliferous stolon. I remember with mortification how I 

 floundered helplessly through the first few months in what ap- 

 peared to me a hopeless struggle to reach solid ground, until one 

 day I happened to find out something new about that stolon. 

 It was a very trivial point, but in the exuberance of my first-dis- 

 covery I showed it to Professor Brooks, and from that moment 

 his attitude toward me changed as if by magic. I was forthwith 

 consecrated to the study of the Tunicata. Brooks had, however, 

 the habit of suddenly suggesting and urging upon a student a to- 

 tally different problem from the one upon which he was working, 

 and this caused the greatest consternation among us during our 

 earlier years, until we found by experience that he usually for- 

 got about the matter in a few days. In this connection I cannot 

 refrain from quoting from a letter which he wrote me from Bal- 

 timore while I was absorbed in studying the embryology of Ap- 

 pendicularia at the Beaufort Laboratory in the summer of 1895. 

 "I have just heard from Bigelow," he wrote, "that the medusa 

 which I have been studying (Gonionemus) is now abundant in the 

 Eel Pond at Woods Hole. If you could get the embryology and 

 metamorphosis, it would make a fine thesis, and I write in the 

 hope that you may be disposed to go to Woods Hole at once to 

 try to study it, and to get specimens of the adult for me." The 

 idea of dropping all of my work and setting out on a journey from 

 North Carolina to Massachusetts to collect jelly fishes did not 

 appeal very strongly to me, and I remained in Beaufort, but just 

 how I escaped from the situation, which was quite embarrassing 

 at the time, I do not now remember. 



The recollections of Professor Brooks that are the most vivid 

 and interesting ones to me are chiefly associated with our summers 

 at the marine laboratories, for it was there, away from the routine 

 and greater restraint of the life in Baltimore, that we came to 

 know him most intimately and affectionately. In the daily 

 companionship with him, for he constantly shared with us both 

 the joys and hardships of the work, the lovable side of his nature 

 was conspicuously open to us. A thousand incidents associated 

 with him at Beaufort crowd my memory as I recall him there, 

 the center of our life, the enthusiastic naturalist, the wise coun- 



