MEMORIAL OF O. II. SAINT JOHN 41 



development of Paleozoic fishes is found in the numerous memoirs which 

 were issued in rapid succession and in the several more pretentious mono- 

 graphs, all of which amply testify how extensively he contributed to our 

 knowledge of the subject. Although working so long and so far from 

 his native State and the habitats of his materials, it is a singular coin- 

 cidence that he should have found in these distant places that the main 

 collections consisted of specimens obtained from around his old home. 

 Through his almost uncanny skill in reconstructing these ancient or- 

 ganisms from merest fragments, his home State became famous the 

 world over. 



His efforts do not stop at merely pointing out the genetic relationships 

 of the old fishes or in delineating their structures. All of his descrip- 

 tions are complete, lucid, and illuminating. Few of the forms which he 

 described need redefinition, even after the elapse of fifty years. Large 

 numbers of forms were noted and described as new to science. 



In his methods of work, Saint John was, perhaps, overcautious and 

 possibly a little too deliberate. He worked slowly and with infinite pains 

 to the minutest details. He was never sufficiently satisfied with any 

 given effort to call it complete or finished. He had an insatiable appetite 

 for more facts, or "proofs," as he termed them, of which he always wanted 

 just a little more. For this reason his commercial reports had almost to 

 be extracted from him by main force. He had his own methods of work 

 and study, from which he could not easily be diverted. When once 

 reached, his results could always be relied on with all the confidence that 

 human care and skill could inspire. No one was ever misled by an 

 opinion or report by him on any question founded on geological grounds. 

 If an opinion was not demonstrated by the facts and necessary infer- 

 ences, according to his own standards of accuracy, he could not be in- 

 duced to give it. It was useless to try to obtain from him offhand or 

 hurried conclusions. Hence his results, though painfully slow in being- 

 arrived at, inspired a confidence on the part of his employers which he 

 esteemed the best reward for his labors. - The fact that a "soulless'' cor- 

 poration, organized and operated solely for business, pensioned him with 

 a comfortable living honorarium for more than a decade after he had 

 become totaliy'incapacitated physically is best evidence of the esteem in 

 which he was held by those to whose service he devoted the best years of 

 his later life, and also the value which they placed on his scientific work. 

 The episode was rather a pleasing 'one on both sides. 



When Saint John first left the purely ^scientific realms to enter, what 



lie thought temporarily, the economic field, he fully intended to return 



^ at no distant date. He had extensive plans for further researches on the 



