MEMOIR OF NATHANIEL. SOUTHGATE SHALER 593 



and knew something of geology. He owned what we might call an experi- 

 mental farm a few miles from Newport, where in his spare time he culti- 

 vated new varieties of seed, tobacco, and grapes, and also experimented 

 with breeds of sheep. The son was much about with his father in the 

 open, often galloping out to the farm from town on a pet mare, and was 

 encouraged by his father in making experiments of his own with plants 

 and in collecting specimens interesting to a boy, such as minerals, arrow- 

 heads, and so on. The boy's health was delicate, so his school attendance 

 was irregular and his formal training was acquired from a learned Ger- 

 man named Escher, with whom his studies were of the philosophic and 

 literary kind. From his mother he inherited his intense energy and 

 quickness of repartee, and from her father he absorbed much of general 

 culture, for his grandfather was a good Greek and Latin scholar, of a 

 wide acquaintance with things intellectual, to whose discerning talk the 

 boy listened eagerly. Thus he grew up constantly in the open and trained 

 in out-of-door accomplishments, familiar with plants and animals and 

 loving Nature, while at home his appreciation for the things in books 

 was growing under this personal environment. 



Young Shaler entered the Lawrence Scientific School in 1859, when 

 18 years old, registering in the course in zoology and geology, under 

 Louis Agassiz, whose fame attracted students from the entire country. 

 Among his classmates are found the names of Alexander Agassiz, Daniel 

 C. Eaton, Alpheus Hyatt, F. W. Putnam, A. E. Verrill, Burt G. Wilder, 

 A, S. Bickmore, A. S. Packard, and others, men who have spread the 

 study of natural history in this country. While a student, he with Verrill 

 and Hyatt made an excursion in 1861 to the island of Anticosti, studying 

 the geology and collecting fossils, the first of his many wanderings over 

 the surface of North America. He received his degree of B. S. in 1863, 

 when 21 years old; but, without waiting for commencement, enlisted in 

 the Federal army in Kentucky and was commissioned as captain of the 

 Fifth Kentucky battery, called "Shaler's," and served two years, mainly 

 in Kentucky. A volume of poetry published since his death deals with 

 this phase of his life. Eeturning in 1864 to the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, he was appointed "Assistant in Paleontology," with general 

 charge, under Louis Agassiz, of that department. In this year, when 23 

 years old, he began his first public course of lectures at the Museum, on 

 the "Geological succession of the brachiopoda" and on the "Elevation of 

 continents." In 1866 he was obliged to suspend his work, owing to ill 

 health, and spent over a year traveling in Europe, visiting many 

 museums, seeing classical geological districts, and meeting such men as 

 Dnrwiti, r^yoll, and Elie de Beaumont. 



