Decembeb 4, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



781 



the philosophic study of morphology. 

 And with a more fortunate choice of pub- 

 lisher the book might have long continued 

 to widen the sphere of his influence. 



Dr. Brooks married, in 1877, Amelia 

 Katherine Schultz, of Baltimore. His 

 happy home life furnished the environ- 

 ment for the development of his very 

 domestic social needs and the loving care of 

 his devoted wife tided him through many 

 difficult contests between his over-zeal for 

 work and his physical restrictions. 



But Mrs. Brooks, in the spring of 1901, 

 after long years of suffering, lightened we 

 hope for a time by the appreciation that 

 came to Professor Brooks when his stu- 

 dents requested him to sit for the portrait 

 that they presented on his fiftieth birth- 

 day, and which came more for her comfort 

 than for his, passed away from life, to 

 be followed for us too soon by the man 

 whose life we rejoice in, whose death we 

 mourn. 



To the students who were taken so freely 

 into that home life a hope of attaining the 

 best that life has to offer, despite financial 

 restrictions, was held forth, and there are 

 many who recall the delightful evenings of 

 reading and talk when they met at his 

 house on terms of equality and free inter- 

 course. His two children he strove to edu- 

 cate with freedom from too much of the 

 burden of inherited custom and regretted 

 the unavoidable interference of some who 

 knew but one orthodox way for the saving 

 of souls. As an example of the thorough- 

 ness with which he sought to apply the best 

 to the problem of education may be cited 

 that he would have none but the best 

 "Windsor and Newton" colors for the boy 

 who was entering upon that period of color- 

 love that all go into and most through, 

 fearing lest the mind would be injured by 

 muddy and overlapping tints, and not kept 

 clear as he sought to hold his own. That 

 his two children should have what he had 



so hardly won, the higher education, he 

 freely spent himself. 



His son, as student in mathematics, re- 

 ceived the degree of Ph.D. at the Johns 

 Hopkins University, and is now an actuary 

 in Jersey City. His daughter graduated 

 at Vassar and was able to comfort the last 

 days of her father who had had clean-cut 

 ideas as to the highest mission of the per- 

 fect woman. 



Their inheritance is that education and 

 the privilege of such parentage and nur- 

 ture. 



The condition of Professor Brooks's 

 health was long a source of anxiety to his 

 friends who knew of his heart trouble. As 

 years passed the problem of continuing 

 hard work with increasing bodily handicaps 

 became very difficult. He felt that he 

 ought not to take a period of rest and 

 absence on account of the needs of his 

 children, thinking to work to the end. 



In 1908 difficulty in breathing added to 

 his burdens and his machinery was most 

 seriously out of order. He continued to 

 come to his lectures and worked earnestly 

 to complete a final paper on salpa, for 

 which the drawings were fiziished and 

 which he planned to write out in the sum- 

 mer. This, he said, would probably be his 

 last piece of serious microscopic research, 

 since trouble with his eyes made the em- 

 ployment of immersion lenses too difficult; 

 and his mind was eager to digest the facts 

 of his long experience and the recent work 

 of others. But his strength was not equal 

 to the task. Sudden attacks confined him 

 to his home, but yet his will brought him 

 back to his laboratory, till one last day, 

 February 12. After preparatory rest, 

 driven by his conscientiousness, he forced 

 himself to attend an oral examination of a 

 candidate for the degree of Ph.D. Then 

 walking to the train that brought him 

 home, he was there overcome by a serious 

 collapse. He was persuaded to go to the 



