18 WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS 



Carnegie Laboratory at Tortugas I was much impressed with 

 his broad kindliness and tolerance of spirit and with his interest 

 in the world. The force and independence of his character also 

 were obvious and it was clear that he would have been a deep 

 student of living things under any conditions of life. He was a 

 thinker even more than an observer. He was the follower of no 

 school, and few men have been so little dominated by the thoughts 

 of the world around them. 



Still it was not his power and originality alone that made him 

 great and reverenced among us. It was his spirit that led us 

 onward in our science. The little boy who studied dragon flies 

 in the pool of his father's yard had had many years pass over him, 

 yet in his simple wondering love of nature he remained as in his 

 childhood days. This deep reverence for the universe of which 

 he felt he formed so small a part, made him careless of many things 

 we deem important in our daily life, for his thoughts were not 

 upon things of the moment but were far beyond in the border- 

 land between the known and the unknown. 



THE CHESAPEAKE ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY 9 



Professor Brooks' early experience at Penikese under Louis 

 Agassiz must have had a great effect upon him. From that time 

 on his interest in marine zoology was one of the dominant influ- 

 ences in his life. One of his first important acts at the Johns 

 Hopkins University was to organize (in 1878) a movable seaside 

 station under the name of the Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory 

 and during the following twenty-eight years he was constantly 

 to be found during the warmer season at some point on the 

 coast or in the West Indies accompanied by a party of students, 

 all engaged in the study of marine life. 



The importance of this Laboratory in the development of the 

 biological department of the Johns Hopkins University and in 

 the general advance of zoology in America may be estimated from 

 the large number of students who worked at the laboratory and 



9 Professor E. G. Conklin, Princeton University, in National Academy 

 Biographical Memoirs, vol. 7. 



