SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 547 



converted from a natural organ into a machine for gerund grind- 

 ing. 



At a time when most of our teaching is little better than or- 

 ganized interference, the attitude of Jordan's parents is instruc- 

 tive. It is told of Darwin that, when one of his friends expressed 

 surprise at the way he allowed his boys to run at loose ends, his 

 reply was : " I dare not interfere ; Nature can manage them better 

 than I can." This recalls Wordsworth's abiding faith 



" that there are powers 

 Which of themselves our minds impress ; 

 That we can feed this mind of ours 

 In a wise passiveness." 



It would be wrong to assume that this attitude toward education 

 is purely negative. In a very positive sense it may be said of 

 young Jordan, as of the good Lord Clifford, that 



" His daily teachers had been woods and rills." 



Such an education might, or might not, be a good one for a 

 bookkeeper, a forge master, or a minister ; for a naturalist it was 

 ideal. One of its outward results was that when, in 1869, the 

 youth of eighteen entered the first freshman class at the Cornell 

 University, he was found to be a learned authority on such diverse 

 subjects as hoof-rot in sheep and the flora of Genesee and Wyo- 

 ming Counties. His career as a teacher had already begun at the 

 Warsaw Academy. In his junior year at Cornell he was ap- 

 pointed an instructor in botany. In his senior year he became 

 President of the Natural History Society, which then counted 

 among its members several men of unusual activity and ability, 

 whose names are now not unknown in the scientific world. At 

 least two of these gentlemen have made their grateful recogni- 

 tion of his high example and bracing personality a matter of 

 record. 



In 1872 he was graduated with the degree of M. S., being the 

 only man who ever received the Master's degree from Cornell 

 upon completion of an undergraduate course. Perhaps it is worth 

 remarking that he shares with Mr. Andrew D. White alone the 

 distinction of an honorary degree from the same university. Im- 

 mediately after graduation he was appointed to the professorship 

 of Natural History at Lombard University, Galesburg, Illinois. 

 Here he began that systematic study of the fishes of the Missis- 

 sippi Valley and the Great Lakes which he continued with so 

 much success during the many years of his residence in Illinois, 

 Wisconsin, and Indiana. Throughout these years all his summer 

 vacations were spent in scientific excursions fruitful of result. 

 Passing over some minor positions which he held but for a short 



