MEMOIR OF ALPHEUS HYATT 505 



met his death suddenly while on his way to a meeting of the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, Januar}^ 15, 1902. 



His youth fell in that fortunate time for students of nature in America 

 when Professor Louis Agassiz was working and teaching in Cambridge, 

 and it was Alpheus Hyatt's good fortune to be much under his instruc- 

 tion. He entered Yale in 1856, but after his freshman year left college 

 to travel for a year in Europe. The career of a merchant, which his 

 parents had intended for him, did not appeal to his tastes, nor did he 

 take kindly to the stud}'' of law, which was next proposed to him. 

 Finally, attracted to Cambridge by the fame of Agassiz, he entered the 

 Lawrence Scientific School in 1858 and took up the study of geology. 

 He graduated in 1862 and spent nine months of the following year in 

 the Union army, from which he retired with the rank of captain. He 

 then renewed his studies under Agassiz in Cambridge, and had for his 

 associates many of the men who have since stood in the front rank of 

 scientific workers in America. His most important work at this period 

 was on the fossil cephalopods,to the study of which he was attracted by 

 the valuable collections in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and 

 concerning which he later published epoch-making papers. 



His first work with Agassiz had awakened his mind to a new way of 

 looking at natural objects. He himself says' of it : 



" He gave me a pentacrinite or stone lily, a rather complex fossil, and told me 

 to study it. This I thought to be easy work, so I took a stroll in the afternoon and 

 thought little of it. Next morning he came up to my table and asked me what I 

 had found. I had never studied from nature before, and began giving a very 

 general description, saying that it was a fossil petrifaction, etcetera, and had what 

 appeared to be the beginning of a stem. When I had got to this point he said in 

 impatient tone, ' Stop I stop I you don't know anything about it. It is just what I 

 expected. You haven't told me anything that you know. Look at it again and 

 tell me something that you see for yourself.' I had faint book remembrances and 

 had been relying on these. Taken all aback at this, I began to work. I thought 

 about it all day, and dreamed about it at night. Next morning I began to tell him 

 what I had found out, and before I was one-quarter through he stopped me, saying, 

 'That is good. But,' he added, 'you have not yet told me what I want.' AVith 

 this he pointed to the side of the room, where star fishes, ophiurans, and sea 

 urchins were kept, and told me to see what more he wanted. In this blind way, 

 and with no further hint, I worked unsuccessfully for a long time. Then I found 

 that I had omitted the most conspicuous point, the star-like appearance. Not 

 knowing whether this was of importance or not, I timidly reported at the next 

 interview this resemblance to the star fishes, and Professor Agassiz was satisfied. 

 This burned into my mind the most important lesson of my life, how to get real 

 knowledge by observation and how to use it by comparison and inference." 



This method of acquiring knowledge was never more faithfully and 

 judiciously used than by Professor Hyatt in conducting his researches; 



