Early Naturalists 



43 



one of its Sunday issues. The very next Sunday, however, 

 Marsh, who, it appears, had likewise been accumulating 

 a private stock of Copeiana, proved with equal success 

 that Cope's life was one long string of errors from first to 

 last. 



11 Heredity makes strange bedfellows. It is only by the 

 most extraordinary combination of personal characteristics 

 that we find among scientific men of the greatest capacity, 

 such strange mixtures of personal qualities side by side with 

 genius. ' ' 7 



Possibly it was some of these early rivalries which prompted 

 Bret Harte 's classic little gem of comedy, * ' The Society upon 

 the Stanislow." 



A pathetic figure among the makers of American science is 

 Lesquereux, the Swiss botanist, and associate of Louis Agassiz. 

 He was born in the province of 

 Neuchatel, Switzerland, in 1806, 

 emigrating to America in 1848. 

 His interest was at first in living 

 plants, but he later devoted himself 

 almost entirely to a study of fossil 

 forms. After coming to America 

 he was connected with several state 

 surveys, and later with the terri- 

 torial surveys under Hayden. His 

 work on the coal forming plants of 

 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and 

 Arkansas served chiefly to make his 

 reputation. He worked under 

 peculiar disadvantages, being but a 

 poor master of English, and becom- 'ASA GRAY 



ing deaf at an early age. He once From Popular Science Monthly. 



Said Of himself, "My deafness CUt copy furnished ly Conrad 



me off from everything that ^ lay f a e sm& company, 

 outside of science. I have lived 



with nature, the rocks, the trees, the flowers. They know me. 

 I know them. All outside are dead to me. ' ' 8 



It is in connection with these early surveys that we first 

 meet with the names of many men famous in the annals of 

 American science, who are still living, or have but recently 

 passed away Jordan, the ichthyologist, and more recently the 

 philosopher and apostle of pacifism, Coulter, the botanist, 

 Gilbert, the ichthyologist, Scudder, the entomologist, Coues, 

 the ornithologist, and Asa Gray, premier botanist of America, 

 and author of the well-known manual of American plants. 



*" Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences," 1912, p. xxxiv. 



Locus citatus. 



