542 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PHILADELPHIA MEETING 



ally," upward of 100,000 fossils. To the Albany Museum he gave his 

 entire collection of land and fresh-water shells, some 40,000 specimens. 

 In the field few excelled Beech er as a collector. To him more than to 

 any other we owe the present methods of washing clay for immature 

 invertebrates as well as of etching silicious fossils from limestone. The 

 Yale collections are rich in such delicate and well-preserved material. 

 Clarke, who often collected with him, stated that " he was the most dis- 

 criminating acquirer of the unusual, the exceptional, and the fine that it 

 was my fortune to know." 



As a paleontologist he was trained in stratigraphy and in the descrip- 

 tion of species and genera, but latterly he took almost no direct interest in 

 this kind of work. Often he told me that he wished all our fossils were 

 named. This is all the more remarkable because of his long association 

 with Hall and Marsh. The explanation seems to lie in the fact that his 

 philosophic bent did not come to full fruition until he had personally 

 met the philosophic American paleontologist, Alpheus Hyatt. From 

 that time his mind was absorbed in working out the ontogenetic stages 

 in fossil species and in tracing their genetic sequence through the geolog- 

 ical formations. To Beecher we owe the first natural classification of the 

 Brachiopoda and the Trilobita, based on the law of recapitulation and on 

 chronogenesis. He also gave a very philosophic account as to the origin 

 and significance of spines in plants and animals. On these works his 

 reputation in days to come will chiefly rest. 



Beecher was not only a born naturalist, but also had much mechanical 

 ability. Nothing pleased him more than to free fossils from the sur- 

 rounding matrix, and his unexcelled talent in this direction is shown 

 in the preparations of 'Triarthrus and Trinucleus in the Yale University 

 museum. More than 500 specimens have been prepared by him, and 

 this work has required peculiar skill, patience, ingenuity, and a great 

 deal of time. It is very unfortunate that he did not live to finish his 

 studies on the trilobites, but he left all the better specimens completely 

 worked out, and of most of them he had made photographs and drawings. 



Charles Emerson Beecher, son of Moses and Emily D. Beecher, was 

 born in Dunkirk, New York, October 9, 1856. Not long after this date 

 his parents removed to Warren, Pennsylvania, where he prepared for 

 college at the high school, and was graduated from the University of 

 Michigan, receiving the degree of B. S. in 1878. The ten succeeding years 

 he served as an assistant to Professor James Hall. In 1888 he was invited 

 by Professor Marsh to remove to New Haven and to take charge of the 

 collections of invertebrate fossils in the Peabody Museum. His career 

 as a teacher of geology began in 1891, when for two years he took charge 



