WIU.IAM K£lTH BROOKS — CONKUN 

 / 



by, but not to blindly follow, the writings of that great thinker 

 on the principles of science, George Berkeley." 



Leaving Hobart at the end of his sophomore year, he entered 

 the junior class at Williams College in the fall of 1868. Con- 

 cerning his life at Williams, Mr. T. H. Brooks, of Cleveland, 

 a lifelong friend, but not a relative, writes : 



I look back over half a century of acquaintance with Prof. William K. 

 Brooks, commencing, of course, at a very early period in our lives. We 

 played together, went to the public school here together, and later were 

 classmates at Williams College, and were both graduated from there in 

 1870. I never knew him otherwise than kind, gentle, thoughtful, and 

 studious; not demonstrative in his friendships, but thoroughly loyal and 

 sincere. He cared nothing for marks or prizes in college, was very 

 liable to burn the midnight oil over some subject that specially ap- 

 pealed to him, and then "cut" prayers and early recitations the next 

 morning. He never put himself forward to answer the questions of the 

 class room, but when called upon always gave a good account of him- 

 self. College boys, so far as my experience goes, take the problems of 

 calculus without question and almost without understanding, but he 

 grasped and was delighted with every proposition, and to the utter 

 amazement of his professors and classmates, discovered a mistake in 

 the text-book used. He was generally acknowledged to have been the 

 most brilliant student in mathematics Williams had ever seen." 



His love of the natural sciences was fostered by the Lyceum 

 of Natural History at Williams, an active organization which 

 at one time sent a natural history expedition across South 

 America, and by Sanborn Tenny, botanist and zoologist, under 

 whom he studied. But the history of his whole life indicates 

 that he was not led into the study of zoology by teachers or 

 environment. We may apply to him with especial force the 

 following sentiment from his address before the Seventh Inter- 

 national Zoological Congress (p. 34) : "Most of us have, no 

 doubt, been drawn to our specialty by the natural bent of our 

 minds, rather than by deliberate choice. The zoologist who 

 best deserves the name is one whose natural bent has been too 

 strong for him, so that he has studied zoology because he could 

 not help it." Prof. E. A. Birge, of the University of Wiscon- 

 sin, was a freshman at Williams when Brooks was a senior. 

 He remembers that Brooks had a microscope, a rare thing in 

 those days, and that with it he showed many interesting things 

 to his fellow-students, who frequented his room, evenings. On 



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