TIMOTHY ABBOT CONRAD. 391 



cause of the delay in investigating our rich and interesting 

 Tertiary beds." 



Prof. Ball, in considering Conrad as a paleontologist, re- 

 marks as follows : " Mr. Conrad had several peculiarities ; he 

 wrote his letters and labels frequently on all sorts of scraps of 

 paper, generally without date or location. He was naturally 

 careless or unmethodical, and his citations of other authors' 

 works can not safely be trusted without verification, and are 

 usually incomplete. He had a very poor memory, and on 

 several occasions had redescribed his own species. This de- 

 fect increased with age, and, while no question of wilful mis- 

 statement need arise, made it impossible to place implicit con- 

 fidence in his own recollections of such matters as dates of 

 publication. He himself says in a characteristic letter to F. B. 



Meek, written in July, 1863 : ' I go on Monday to help H 



ferret out my skulking species of Palaeozoic shells. May the 

 recording angel help me ! God and I knew them once, and 

 the Almighty may know still. A man's memory is no part of 

 his soul.' 



" In spite of this constitutional defect, Conrad had an acute 

 and observant eye, and an excellent, if sometimes hasty, judg- 

 ment on matters of geology and classification. He was in 

 advance of his time in discriminating genera, and in field 

 researches and work on the specimens showed more than 

 ordinary capacity. In those branches of his work which 

 required knowledge of literature and systematic research he 

 took less interest and pains. 



"Like many shy people he was brought rather than ven- 

 tured into numerous controversies, which are now ancient 

 history, and need not be further alluded to. But the sketch 

 just given will enable readers to understand the origin of 

 much that is irritating to those who are obliged to rely upon 

 Conrad's work and find in it slips and errors so obvious that 

 they seem unpardonable. He had the defects of his qualities, 

 but whether for good or evil he was the principal worker in 

 the field of Tertiary geology in America for many years. He 

 has left a voluminous literature, and neither his faults nor his 

 virtues can by any method be ignored." 



When Darwin's Origin of Species was published, Conrad 

 became intensely interested in the discussions that wonderful 

 book provoked. He did not take the theory up as subject- 



