THOMAS CONDON 
CHESTER W. WASHBURNE 
Chicago 
The death (February 11, 1907) of Professor Thomas Condon 
ended a life little known among scientists, yet a life of considerable 
service to geology. 
Professor Condon was an unusual man in that he seemed to have 
no desire to publish the results of his study. There are but few 
papers, only eight strictly geological, and one book, published over 
his name. But the writings of the scientists of his day—Le Conte, 
Dana, Marsh, Cope, and others— are full of references to Dr. Con- 
don, and all of them acknowledge his contribution to science by 
exploration and theory. 
Condon discovered the famous John Day beds which have so 
enriched our knowledge of Tertiary vertebrates. Here he found 
some of the specimens of three-toed horses on which Marsh based his 
theory of the evolution of that animal.? In this instance Marsh gave 
the discoverer scant credit for his work, and the type-specimens 
remained in Yale Museum until after Marsh died. The same thing 
happened to many other valuable specimens loaned to Marsh, Cope, 
Gabb, and others. A fine lot of Pliocene birds from southeastern 
Oregon, loaned to Cope, were never returned. It was doubtless to 
the interest of science that these fossils fell into the hands of other 
men, but it was unjust to Condon not to acknowledge more fully his 
services, and not to return his specimens. In 1867 Professor Condon 
printed in the Portland Oregonian an account of what he then thought 
to be the first fossil horses found in America, the same specimens that 
Marsh described several years later. What a strange contrast between 
these zealous, ambitious paleontologists, and that lonely, unselfish 
but no less devoted worker in the wilderness of Oregon! 
Condon’s best friend and occasional companion was Joseph Le 
Conte, who accompanied him on several trips, and who always gave 
t Professur Henry F. Osborn has said: “I believe that Professor Condon 
deserves the entire credit of the discovery of the Upper Oligocene horses in the John 
Day.” (Pacific Monthly, November, 1906, p. 566.) 
280 
