ALPHEUS HYATT, 18S8-1902 133 



placed him in charge of the fossil cephalopods and this collection 

 remained under his care until his death in 1902. 



In 1865 lie published his first scientific paper, a short one of only 

 five pages in which he states that the Beatricidae which he collected at 

 Anticosti in 1861 are not fossil plants as others had supposed, but 

 cephalopods. We know, however, that he was himself mistaken, for 

 they are now believed to be hydrocorallines. 



In the same year he wrote an appreciative notice of the life of his 

 young college chum, George H. Emerson, a chemist of great promise, 

 whose untimely death from overwork had terminated at its very begin- 

 ning a useful life in science. While in college together Emerson and 

 Hyatt had begun the critical study of the bible, Hyatt coming to enter- 

 tain liberal views while Emerson became a ritualist. It was character- 

 istic of Hyatt to disagree upon essential matters with his closest friends 

 and yet never in any sense to lessen the mutual esteem and affection 

 between him and them. His simple honesty, freedom from conceit and 

 above all his cordial and generous nature made this possible. Thus it 

 was that within a year of the time when he began his studies under 

 Agassiz he became an evolutionist and an admirer of Lamarck, whom 

 Agassiz characterized as " an absurd egotist." Independent of the 

 theoretical side of |his work Hyatt will be remembered as a great teacher 

 and a leader in systematic zoology, for he was an uncommonly accurate 

 observer and his publications present a vast body of well-founded facts. 



The year 1865 saw Louis Agassiz's pupils, whom the war had 

 scattered, again working by their master's side at Harvard. But the old 

 relation of master and pupil could not long endure, for the truth was 

 that the time had come for the young birds to fly from the paternal nest, 

 and in 1867 Morse, Packard, Putnam and Hyatt severed their relations 

 with Agassiz and cast in their lot with the Essex Institute of Salem; 

 this movement being known as the " Salem secession." Salem thus 

 became an active center in the natural sciences and so much public 

 interest was awakened that in 1869 these four young men cooperated 

 with a number of progressive citizens of the town to found the Peabody 

 Academy of Sciences, and with the aid of Scudder and others they suc- 

 ceeded in establishing the first permanent American journal devoted to 

 the natural sciences. The American Naturalist, Hyatt being one of its 

 editors from 1868 to 1871. 



On January 7, 1867, he married Miss Audella Beebe, daughter of 

 Smith M. Beebe, Esq., of Kinderhook, N. Y. 



During the period of his residence in Salem, Hyatt continued to 

 study and to describe the fossil cephalopods of the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology at Harvard. Suess and Hyatt were indeed the first 

 zoologists to attempt to distinguish genera and species among the 

 ammonites, and Hyatt was the first to announce the fact that these 



