THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST. 



Vol. XXXVIII. June, igo4. 



CHARLES EMERSON BEECH ER. 



ROBERT T. JACKSON. 



In the death of Professor Beecher the science of Invertebrate 

 Palaeontology has lost a most brilliant and eminent leader. In 

 his life so prematurely cut off, he attained a reputation for criti- 

 cal structural and developmental work on fossil animals and 

 philosophical work on the same lines that placed him in the 

 very front rank of his profession. 



Charles Emerson Beecher, son of Moses and Emily Emerson 

 Beecher, was born in Dunkirk, New York, October 9th, 1856. 

 He died suddenly of heart disease on February 14th, 1904, in 

 the forty-eighth year of his age. Always a delicate man he had 

 recently been in exceptionally good health, so that his death 

 came without warning. On September 12th, 1894, Professor 

 Beecher married Miss Mary Salome Galligan, who with two 

 young daughters survive him. He left also his mother and a 

 brother, who reside in California. 



In his early childhood the family removed to Warren, Penn- 

 sylvania, where he attended private and High schools. A born 

 naturalist and collector he in childhood began collecting fossils 

 from the Chemung and Waverly formations about Warren, 

 amassing a choice and extensive collection in that region, 



