NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Professor Hall, and affording unrivaled opportunities for the 

 study of American paleozoic invertebrates. During the ten years 

 spent here by young Beecher he not only became proficient to a 

 remarkable degree in knowledge of the New York faunas, but, 

 having a natural facility in mechanical matters and the use of 

 tools, he became an exceptionally fine preparator of fossils, and 

 always enjoyed the process of disentangling a complicated fossil 

 from its matrix, or the revelations of the saw in making serial 

 sections. Some of the preparations of groups of trilobites left 

 by him in the State Museum are marvels of well-directed and 

 successful effort. In such things he took the pride of a success- 

 ful craftsman who knows that his work is good. 



His first scientific papers were written in cooperation with 

 others, and treated of the recent mollusks. After going to Al- 

 bany he continued to collect and study the local fauna. These, 

 together with material collected at "Warren and near Ann Arbor, 

 or obtained by exchanges, amounting in all to about twenty thou- 

 sand specimens, he gave to the New York State Museum in 1886 

 and 1887. 



Beside work on the collections at Albany he rendered, accord- 

 ing to Prof. James Hall, important assistance to that gentleman 

 in the preparation of his great monographs of the different 

 groups of invertebrates from the New York rocks, especially the 

 Mollusks, Polyzoa, and Corals. These works were printed by the 

 State of New York, and in the prefaces ample acknowledgments 

 are made of Beecher's services. 



Always skillful as a draftsman, he added to his small salary 

 from the State by making draT\^gs for professional men at 

 Albany, and most of his papers were illustrated by his own hand. 

 His vacations were spent at localities where collections could be 

 made, especially the richly fossiliferous beds of the Helderberg 

 Mountains, near Albany, New York. Of his collections here 

 Professor Jackson remarks:* 



"Indian Ladder," in the Helderberg Mountains, was always a 

 favorite and fertile spot for him, dating back to his Albany days. 

 It is one of the most beautiful and picturesque regions in the 

 Helderbergs. He collected there slabs of limestone containing 



♦American Naturalist, vol. xxxvni, No. 450. p. 411. 



GO 



