412 Charles Emerson Beecher. 



there were but twelve papers to his credit. Since that time, 

 during the years spent at New Haven, he has written fifty- 

 eight articles, making a total of seventy numbers in his bibli- 

 ography. As a paleontologist he began by describing species 

 and genera, but later he took almost no interest in this kind of 

 work. Often he told the writer that he wished all our fossils 

 were named. Of faunal and stratigraphic papers he has five, 

 and of new species he described but thirty-six. He defined 

 nine new genera and seven new orders. During the past fif- 

 teen years his mind was absorbed in working out the ontoge- 

 netic stages in fossil species and in tracing their genetic sequence 

 through the geological formations. To Beecher we owe the 

 first natural classification of the Brachiopoda and Trilobita, 

 based on the law of recapitulation and on chronogenesis. He 

 also gave a very philosojDhic account as to the origin and sig- 

 nificance 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 surrounding 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. Few can appreciate Beecher's remarkable talent in 

 cleaning the adhering black shale from these small specimens, 

 and it will be a long time before another will be found who 

 can equal him in this respect. It is very unfortunate that he 

 did not live to complete his studies on the trilobites, but he 

 left all the better specimens completely worked out, and of 

 most of these he had made photographs and drawings. His 

 mechanical bent was also evidenced at his home, where he had a 

 bench and a large kit of tools. Here his diversion consisted in 

 making brass scrolls, shelves, and delicately carved boxes and 

 chests. His preparations for the microscope, also, are of the 

 best, and much time in his earlier years was spent in freeing and 

 mounting the lingual dentition in small species of living gas- 

 tropods. He likewise modeled and made a life-size restoration 

 of the Devonian giant Stylonurus. 



