348 [October 18, 



The death of Dr. Holbrook has been deeply felt by a very 

 large circle of friends, and by those who are acquainted with 

 the history of science during the last fifty years. But highly 

 as he was appreciated by all to whom he was personally 

 known, and by his scientific peers and colleagues, America 

 does not know what she has lost in him, nor what she owed 

 to him. A man of singularly modest nature, eluding rather 

 than courting notice, he nevertheless first compelled Euro- 

 pean recognition of American science by the accuracy and 

 originality of his investigations. I well remember the im- 

 pression made in Europe more than five and thirty years ago, 

 by his work on the North American reptiles. Before then, 

 the supercilious English question, so effectually answered 

 since, "Who reads an American book?" might have been 

 repeated in another form, " Who ever saw an American sci- 

 entific work?" But Holbrook's elaborate history of Ameri- 

 can Herpetology was far above any previous work on the 

 same subject. In that branch of investigation Europe had at 

 that time nothing which could compare with it. 



Born near the close of the last century, in '96, Dr. Hol- 

 brook entered upon his career as a student at a moment of 

 unusual activity in scientific research in Europe. Although 

 his birth occurred at Beaufort, S. Carolina, he received, his 

 early education at the North. His father, himself a New 

 England man, brought him, when only a few months' old, to 

 Wrentham, Mass. There he grew up, and though his after 

 fortunes led him back to his birthplace, and the greater part 

 of his life was passed in South Carolina, he remained warmly 

 attached to the home of his boyhood. From school he went 

 to Brown University, and after completing his college course 

 there he studied medicine in Philadelphia, and subsequently 

 practised for a short time with a physician in Boston ;,but he 

 took a larger and more comprehensive view of his profession 

 than that of the special practitioner, and he went abroad to 

 seek a more general scientific culture. He went through the 

 Medical School at Edinburg, and then travelled on the con- 



