2i8 The University of California Magazi7ie. 



PROFESSOR LE CONTE AS SEEN THROUGH HIS 



BIOLOGICAL WORK. 



BY WM. E. RITTER. 



IT is not my purpose to give liere either a historical review 

 of Professor Joseph L,e Conte's biological work or a 

 critical estimate of its value. The former would not be of 

 much interest in itself. The latter, if done at all by any of us 

 who were his intimate associates, must be a task for the future 

 after time shall have given his deeds chance to regain in our 

 minds some poition of the room now filled by the sense of de- 

 privation and grief at the departure from us forever of the 

 rare man, the beloved master, the dear friend. What inter- 

 ests us now above all else is the man himself. 



My primary aim shall be consequently to make the consid- 

 eration of his biological work contribute to the gaining of a 

 fuller and clearer view of the man, his life, his ideals. 



Professor Le Conte's first allegiance was to geology rather 

 than biology. He himself freely owned this, and it was uni- 

 versally recognized among his scientific contemporaries. It 

 is significant, however, that his early training was more bio- 

 logical than geological; that some of his earliest and his very 

 last scientific papers were biological; and that his most origi- 

 nal and probably most enduring work was in this domain. 



The study and practice of medicine, to which he devoted 

 seven years, between the ages of twenty and twenty-seven, were 

 for him, as they should be for all devotees of this noble profess- 

 ion, a biological matter; and later his training under Louis 

 Agassiz was more biological than geological, for Agassiz was 

 primarily a zoologist. 



Among his earliest writings, the papers which bring out 

 best not only the scope but also the philosophical cast of his 

 knowledge in the biological sciences, three are preeminent. 



