VOLUME XXVI NUMBER 8 
THE 
LOU ISNAL OF CEOLOGY 
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1918 
SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON 
1852-1918 
Our distinguished senior colleague in vertebrate paleontology 
passed away August 30, 1918, honored and beloved by all who knew 
him. He seldom spoke of himself, still less of the long struggles 
which beset his career. Our admiration for his character and 
attainments is enhanced through the perusal of his personal recol- 
lections,t which reveal a lofty spirit and an unfaltering determina- 
tion. In the opening pages of his reminiscences he writes: 
As the oldest living student of vertebrate fossils in America and one of the 
oldest in the world, friends have urged me to write some of my recollections. 
Not that I am so very old, but because there were so few vertebrate paleon- 
tologists in the days when I first became interested in the subject—only Leidy, 
Cope, Marsh, and a few other lesser lights in America. Nor were there more 
than a dozen others in all the world, of whom Sir Richard Owen was the chief, 
who had published much about extinct vertebrates. It has never seemed to 
me that there was much of interest that I could say about myself, nor very 
much about the pioneers in paleontology that I could tell. I begin to feel that 
there are not many more years of work before me, and to regret that I have 
not accomplished more. ... . But the way has often been hard, and I am 
thankful to be spared so long and to have done what IJ have. 
And again, in closing: 
My life, as I look back on it, has had many discouragements and many 
pleasures. I have made many mistakes, as I now can see, and I have not 
tSee Recollections; an unpublished autobiography, written May, 1916, copy- 
righted by Mrs. S. W. Williston. 
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