Mabch 21, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



275 



tologj', passed away Augnst 30, 1918, honored 

 and beloved by all who knew him. Our ad- 

 miration for his character and achievements 

 is enhanced through a perusal of his personal 

 recollections^ of his career, which reveal long 

 struggles towards scientific attainment, lofty 

 ideals of exploration and research, and an 

 unfaltering determination. 



Like all men of science who have risen to 

 distinction, Williston was self-made, the im- 

 pulses all coming from within; yet he was 

 instinctively alert to seize every chance to 

 learn and to expand his horizon. We can not 

 imagine a life story more helpful than his to 

 the youth predisposed to science who has both 

 to discover his own talent and to explore 

 every avenue of opportunity which presents 

 itself. 



Williston was bom in Roxbury, now a part 

 of Boston, July 10, 1852. He writes : 



The Williston family has been traced back to 

 about 1650 in Massachusetts; they were about the 

 usual run of common people, no one famous or even 

 noted, whether for good or evil. . . . Some of them 

 served in the War of the Revolution, and many 

 were fishermen. 



His father was born in Maine, and he re- 

 marks of this branch of the family : 



They knew little of schools. My father, if he ever 

 went to school, did not take kindly to study, for 

 he never learned to read or write. ... It was a 

 great pity, too, for my father was a man of far 

 more than ordinary ability as a mechanic — he was 

 noted always for his skill. ... Of all his children 

 I resemble him the most, both physically and 

 mentally. 



His mother was from England, having come 

 with hor parents to New Jersey about 1S12. 

 She had a fair common-school education, and 

 tho efFects of her early English training and 

 her accent remained through life. 



The intellectual and social environment of 

 Roxbury probably never would have produced 

 a geologist or a paleontologist, and while the 

 next step in Williston's life was hard, yet it 

 was propitious, as the events proved : 



2 See ' ' Recollections, ' ' an unpublished autobiog- 

 raphy, written May, 1916, copyrighted by Mrs. S. 

 W. Williston. 



In the spring of 1857 my parents decided to emi- 

 grate to Kansas. A colony had left the year be- 

 fore for Manhattan, and the letters that came back 

 had infected many with the desire to go West. . . . 

 The abolitionists were urging eastern people to 

 colonize the territory in order to help John Brown 

 preserve it to the "Free States." . . . The trip 

 was long and tedious, by rail to St. Louis, then a 

 small place, and thence by steamboat up the Mis- 

 souri River to Leavenworth. There was no Kansas 

 City then. We reached Leavenworth about the 

 twentieth of May. Here we remained a few days 

 in a very small hotel, while my father bought a 

 yoke of oxen and a wagon and such provisions and 

 household things as were indispensable, and we 

 started on the slow and tedious drive of 115 miles 

 to Manhattan through a country but very sparsely 

 settled. For the most part we children rode in the 

 covered wagon while my father and cousin walked 

 and drove the oxen. 



The first building erected in the new town 

 was the stone school-house, to which books 

 were supplied by the Emigrant Aid Society. 

 At the age of seven young Williston made 

 his first collection of fossil shells, from 

 deposits since determined as belonging to the 

 Lower Permian. Following school, he entered 

 the State Agricultural College in 1S66. At 

 the age of fifteen he came under the rare in- 

 fluence of Professor Benjamin F. Mudge, who 

 loaned him a cojjy of Lyell's " Antiquity of 

 Man." Mudge conducted all the courses in 

 natural history, and through his splendid 

 character and example exerted a great in- 

 fluence on yotmg Williston. It was quite by 

 accident, however, that seven years latef 

 Williston was included in Professor Mudge's 

 party to northwestern Kansas (Smolo' Hill 

 Valley Cretaceous) where Professor Mudge, 

 already famous through his discovery in 1872 

 of a specimen of Ichthyornis, was collecting. 



Vertebrate paleontology had become his first 

 love, but he had leanings towards human 

 anatomy and medicine and entomology, first 

 as an avocation and then as a vocation. He 

 was afforded no independent opportunities for 

 paleontological research and publication by 

 Professor Marsh, by whom he was invited to 

 come to New Haven in February, 1876. In 

 the summer seasons of 1876 and 1877 he col- 



