404 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XXI. Xo. 533. 



hardly realize the boon the establishment of 

 this journal was to the naturalists of the 

 country, and few know its financial vicis- 

 situdes and the sacrifices of its editor dur- 

 ing its early days. 



Personally, Dr. Packard was one of the 

 most companionable of men. He was al- 

 ways ready to aid and assist the young in 

 their natural history studies to the extent 

 of his powers. He was critical of the lan- 

 guage in which they clothed their facts and 

 the pages of the Naturalist have profited by 

 his revision. He rarely indulged in con- 

 troversy, and although he could say sharp 

 and cutting things, one may look in vain 

 in his published works for any traces of 

 polemics. 



Dr. Packard was married in 1867 to 

 Elizabeth Derby, the daughter of the late 

 Samuel B. Walcott, of Salem, who, with 

 four children, one a rising naval architect, 

 survives him. 



J. S. KiNGSLEY. 



Tufts College, Mass. 



ALPHEUS SPRING PACKARD* 



I have not known Professor Packard as 

 long, nor as intimately, as many of my col- 

 leagues; and where they have spoken I 

 should remain silent. Neither am I quali- 

 fied to discuss his more immediate scientific 

 work. I can, however, in response to the 

 President 's suggestions, speak of him in the 

 light in which one scientific man sees an- 

 other, older and wiser than himself; but I 

 do so with diffidence. I have, therefore, 

 written down with some care the things 

 which I would not otherwise venture to 

 express. 



It seems an ungracious confession to 

 make, but it is nevertheless true, that it was 

 through Professor Packard that many of 

 us in Washington, twenty or thirty years 



* Address given at the memorial exercises at 

 Brown University. Printed in Science at the 

 request of the editor. 



ago, became aware of the existence of scien- 

 tific activity at Brown University. For 

 age had wearied the enthusiasm of Alexis 

 Caswell twenty years earlier. Yet it was 

 not by his presence that Packard repre- 

 sented her; at least in the years in which 

 I knew him, he was not a frequent attend- 

 ant at scientific meetings remote from 

 Providence. It was his untiring and re- 

 markably pervasive industry that con- 

 fronted us. The president of the National 

 Academy, the director of the Geological 

 Survey and others in authority all felt the 

 force of it ; and at one time there were dis- 

 mal mutterings in the high places of legis- 

 lation asking why the public printer's time 

 should be spent in bringing out the elab- 

 orate researches of one who stood remote 

 from public office. How did this come 

 about? Certainly a man of Professor 

 Packard's singular modesty, of his almost 

 morbid habit of self-depreciation, was the 

 last to find his way through the mazes of a 

 government lobby. His transparent sin- 

 cerity would have been infinitely removed 

 from all this. And yet there was no mys- 

 tery about it. It was a mere force from 

 within breaking its way. The power of 

 Professor Packard's intellect bearing on 

 subjects of natural history, the scope and 

 accuracy of his learning and the purity of 

 his scientific ideals were his only resources ; 

 and wherever institutions needed the fruits 

 of ripe scholarship to dignify their own 

 scientific activities, these were the first to 

 feel the influence of Professor Packard's 

 productive zeal, as they were compelled to 

 guide its progress. And so our unobtru- 

 sive colleague taxed the people of the whole 

 United States to publish his magnificent 

 memoirs — because he was genuine. 



The same facts appear in a different 

 way, in the further story of Professor 

 Packard's life. I am the last man to speak 

 lightly of the young vigor and the promise 

 of our American institutions, or of our 



