General Meeting.] 420 [Dec. 21, 



another of our corporate members, Cordelia Adelaide Studley, who 

 died on the third of the present month, in her thirty- second year. 



Miss Studley was a woman of broad culture and of a remarkable 

 mind, but possessed of such extreme sensitiveness that it was dif- 

 ficult for her to meet the trials of the independent life she felt it 

 her duty, from the highest and most honorable of motives, to follow. 

 To these were added such true womanly attributes as to endear 

 her to all who had the good fortune of claiming her personal friend- 

 ship, while to those who knew her but slightly these lovely qualities 

 were so marked as to make her a most attractive woman. 



With the firm belief that it is the duty of every woman to have 

 some special purpose in life, she entered upon medical studies, 

 first at the Boston University and afterwards at Ann Arbor, where 

 she hoped to take her degree ; but she overtasked her strength and 

 returned to Boston for medical treatment under one of our highest 

 specialists. 



In October, 1881, she became a special student in the Peabody 

 Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, 

 where her remarkable qualifications soon led to her appointment 

 as an assistant, and until July, 1886, she there devoted herself to 

 the special study of human osteology, with the hope of solving the 

 great problem of the American races, so far as it could be solved 

 by that study. In these investigations she made remarkable prog- 

 ress and the paper upon the human remains from the caves in 

 Coahuila, Mexico, printed in the 18th Report of the Museum, in 

 1884, placed her at once in the front rank of craniologists and in- 

 dicates how important would have been her maturer studies in that 

 direction. Unfortunately, pecuniary reasons led her to abandon 

 these researches and accept another position where the duties 

 proved to be beyond her strength. She resigned this place and 

 while hopefully awaiting restored health in order, as she hoped, to 

 become a teacher at Hampton, she was nervously prostrated and 

 her lamentable death soon followed. 



So few women have taken an active part in scientific research in 

 our community that it is meet for us to take particular notice of 

 our gentle and gifted associate whose presence we shall so greatly 

 miss at our gatherings. 



The records of the last meeting were read and approved. The 

 list of candidates for membership was read. 



