Vol. 4. FEBRUARY, 1888. No. 34 



ANDREW GARRETT. 



[The following sketch of this celebrated American conchologist 

 was contributed to the San Francisco Bulleiin, by Ebenezer V. 

 Cooper, an American missionary at Huahine, Society Islands, 

 and is kindly furnished us by Dr. R. E. C Stearns. — Editor.'^ 



Andrew Garrett, a celebrated conchologist, died at his residence 

 on the Island of Huahine, Society Group, South Seas, on Novem- 

 ber I, 1887, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. For some months 

 past he had suffered from a severe form of cancer in the face, 

 which at last brought about his death. Mr. Garrett was the 

 third child of a family of fourteen, and was born on April 9, 1823, 

 in Beaver street, Albany. His mother was Joanna Van Neah 

 Campaneaux, a native of Belgium, of good education and speak- 

 ing several languages, and his father was Francis Garrett, a 

 native of Canada. Both parents lived to old age, the mother 

 attaining seventy-two years and the father eighty-four years. The 

 early life of Andrew Garrett was spent in Vermont, where he 

 very soon manifested a decided scientific turn of mind. On one 

 occasion, when eight years of age, he left home without warning, 

 to visit a museum about one hundred miles away. He accom- 

 plished his object and returned home in safety. He had a great 

 fondness for travel, and to satisfy the longing, he went to sea at 

 the age of eighteen years. As a shell collector he made his first 

 acquaintance with the South Pacific in 1848, and in 1852 he ulti- 

 mately adopted that Island-studded ocean as his special field of 

 research. Since that time Mr. Garrett has visited almost every 

 island of note in the various groups of the South Pacific, spend- 

 ing considerable time in each group. His studies not only em- 

 braced shells of the marine, fresh water and land orders, but also 

 birds, fishes and other objects of natural history. For one period 

 of ten years he was professionally engaged in the interests of the 

 Godeffroy Museum, Hamburg, during which time was published 

 'Andrew Garrett's Fische der Siidsee,' in six parts, edited by Dr. 

 Albert Gunther, of the British Museurr. Mr. Garrett was also 

 for a time associated w^ith Professor Agassiz. In addition to 

 visiting and residing in every group of islands in the South Pacific, 



