XATIOXAL ACADEMY OF SCIEXCES. 



Professor Marsh recognized Beecher's ability and appreciated 

 his loj'alt}'- as assistant in the Museum, which on the Paleon- 

 tological and Geological side Marsh eifectively controlled during 

 his lifetime. On Marsh's death, in 1899, Beecher succeeded him 

 as curator of the geological collections, and was made a member 

 of and secretary to the Board of Trustees of the Museum. He 

 then undertook to arrange, develop, and place on exhibition the 

 Marsh collection of fossil vertebrates. This work was done under 

 his direction, though he personally had much to do with the large 

 mounts of Claosaurus and Brontosaurus, the former of which he 

 has described at length in a paper published by the Connecticut 

 Academy in its Transactions. 



In June, 1899, Beecher gave his large and very valuable collec- 

 tion of fossils to the Peabody Museum, as he expressed it, "in 

 grateful recognition of the honors and favors conferred upon me 

 during my connection with the University." These collections 

 comprised over 100,000 specimens and about five hundred types, 

 which had served as a basis for publications by the States of JSTew 

 York and Pennsylvania and various scientific periodicals. The 

 material was chiefly from the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous 

 of the two States mentioned, and represented the private labor, 

 outside of his official working hours, for some twenty years. 



"Alread}^ interested in studies of the development of organ- 

 isms from his work on the development of Silurian brachiopods, 

 in 1889 Beecher became deeply interested in the late Professor 

 Hyatt's methods of work — the application of the principles of 

 stages in development, acceleration, parallelism, and dynamic 

 genesis to the unraveling of the genealogical relations of living 

 and fossil animals. Bringing to this work his large and intimate 

 knowledge of species and the structure of fossil types, Beecher 

 entered into this field with characteristic energy and became a 

 leader of the Hyatt school. Beecher's reputation as an investi- 

 gator will rest chiefly on the rich results he obtained in the crit- 

 ical, painstaking application of those fruitful principles that 

 Professor Hyatt labored so long to establish."* 



* R. T. Jackson in American Naturalist for June, 1904. This article 

 and Professor Schuchert's memoir in the American Journal of 

 Science for the same month have been freely laid under contribution 

 for the purposes of the present memoir. 



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