322 EXTO^rOLOGICAL NEWS [Nov.,'l8 



Samuel Wendell Williston. 



By J. M. Aldrtch, West Lafayette. Indiana. 



Samuel \\'endell Williston, the eminent palaeontologist and 

 dipterist, died in Chicago on August 30, 19 18. At the time 

 of his death and for some years previous he was Professor of 

 Palaeontology and Director of the Walker Museum in the 

 University of Chicago. 



He was born in Boston on July 10, 1852, and was therefore 

 a little past 66 years old. His father was a blacksmith, un- 

 educated but of native ability, who removed with his family 

 to Manhattan, Kansas, in 1857. Here young Williston's boy- 

 hood was spent, and in due time he entered the Agricultural 

 College in his home town, graduating from it in 1872. But 

 his college course was interrupted, for he ran away from home 

 at 18 and went to work as a railroad laborer, from which 

 humble position he rose before he was 20 to be a transit man 

 at a handsome salary for that time. However, he suffered 

 greatly from malaria, and had to resign and go back home ; 

 after recuperating he finished his college course. Railroad 

 engineering went flat in the panic of 1873. and he began to 

 study medicine, "reading" in the office of a local doctor. In 

 the summers of 1874 and 1875 he assisted Professor B. F. 

 Mudge on fossil-collecting expeditions in W^estern Kansas, 

 the work being done for Professor Marsh of Yale University. 

 He spent the winter of 1875-6 in the medical school of the 

 University of Iowa, and was invited to come to Yale to see 

 Marsh in the spring ; this resulted in a contract to work for 

 Marsh for three years at $40 a month, and in all to almost 

 continuous employment with him for nine years, until 1885. 

 He managed to finish his medical course and get his M.D. at 

 Yale in 1880. But by this time his scientific bent was strongly 

 developed, and it soon appeared that his work lay in following 

 it rather than in the practice of medicine. He specialized in 

 I)alaeontology, and received his Ph.D. under Marsh in 1885. 

 His genius for anatomy led to an appointment as demonstrator 

 in Yale Medical the following year, and after a short appren- 



