544 PROCEEDINGS OP THE PHILADELPHIA MEETING 



As to his methods of investigation, Clarke says : 



"A part of Mr Beecher's fine natural equipment for scientific research was his 

 indomitable patience necessary to establish broad premises. His conclusions were 

 never hasty nor ever stated on merely one aspect of the evidence. All the more 

 far-reaching and striking of his deductions in his later work, when his mind had 

 turned chiefly to problems of biogenesis, are known to his friends to be the result 

 of tireless acquisitions of material and the focussing of light from every source. In 

 some quarters, his methods unknown, their results were not accepted; they were 

 regarded as startling, as iconoclastic, and even unreliable." 



During his bachelor days at New Haven he lived in " the attic," a 

 series of rooms fitted up in Bohemian style in old Sheffield Hall, with 

 Penfield, Pirsson, and Wells, all of whom are now full professors. After 

 the day's work the " attic philosophers " met here in delightful inter- 

 course, social and scientific, and it was here that during the late 5 8Crs 

 and early '90's many pleasant acquaintances and recollections were ac- 

 quired with the young scientific men of this and other countries. 



Beecher's first paleontologic paper was published by the Geological 

 Survey of Pennsylvania in 1884, when he was 28 years old. It treated 

 of new genera and species of Phyllocarida from the Devonian, a group 

 of rare Crustacea, most of which he found about his home. He was 

 always on the lookout for these rare fossils, and after securing many hun- 

 dred additional specimens he again returned to the subject, and in 1902, 

 in a paper published by the Geological Society of London, embodied all 

 that is known of the Upper Devonian Phyllocarida of Pennsylvania. 



Beecher's first turn from stratigraphic paleontology to pure paleo- 

 biology and correlation had its origin in the brachiopods. Hall had as- 

 sembled some tons of the Silurian fossils occurring at Waldron, Indiana. 

 This collection contained many slabs, and as much loose clay adhered 

 to them, Beecher and Clarke night after night for an entire winter washed 

 this material ; eventually they together obtained about 50,000 specimens 

 of young brachiopods, among which were included every stage of develop- 

 ment of these shells. Their results were published in 1889 in a well- 

 illustrated paper entitled " Development of some Silurian Brachiopods." 



From a study of the nature of the pedicle opening, these authors con- 

 cluded that the " phylogenetic development tended in two main chan- 

 nels," and this arrangement foreshadowed two orders of brachiopods for 

 which Beecher later proposed the names Neotremata and Telotremata. 



My acquaintance with Beecher began in 1889, and .at that time it was 

 evident that the paper just referred to was being considered with a better 

 understanding of what Hyatt's principles meant when applied to Brachi- 

 opoda. The very fact that nearly all the Waldron, Indiana, brachiopods 

 began with smooth shells having a subcircular outline led him to look 



