28 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LI 



One other trait that sometimes showed itself, especially 

 in his writings, was his capacity for trenchant and satir- 

 ical criticism. Morse (1912, p. 283) has given some ex- 

 amples. It is characteristic of many hypokinetics to feel 

 deeply and to resent warmly. In weighing any criticism 

 we must always consider the personality of the critic. 

 Perhaps in this reaction of Whitman's we see trace of a 

 Whitman ''sternness" shown also by his father. 



Artistic Ta^^e.— Professor Whitman had a keen artis- 

 tic sense. This is proved by the success, in his boyhood, 

 of his mounts of birds. I think we may go back of this 

 and find evidence of an artistic sense in the appeal made 

 to him by natural beauty— the beauty of forests, flowers, 

 birds and beasts. To a person without the sense of 

 beauty natural forms have little attraction. Later this 

 sensitiveness to and love of form shows itself in the beau- 

 tiful drawings he made at Penikese, the exquisite plates 

 of leeches and the delicate pencil drawings of the Dicy- 

 emids. It is clear that the art of Japan appealed strongly 

 to him and he had in his house at Chicago many examples 

 of that art. It was love of form that made him a mor- 

 phologist and led him in the Journal of Morphology to in- 

 troduce a beauty of execution of plates exceeding any- 

 thing then current in America. It was this sense of 

 beauty that led him to select excellent Japanese artists to 

 draw and paint his pigeons. While I have not been able 

 to make an exhaustive study of the distribution of artistic 

 sense in his relatives, it appears that his father, who was 

 a carriage manufacturer, was an artistic one. The wood- 

 work of the finish was done very carefully, the wheels 

 made by hand and so artistically was the whole executed 

 that he once received a silver cup as prize for one of his 

 carriages at a competitive exhibition. On the other side 

 we find his mother's father, Solomon Leonard, was also 

 an artisan. He established an iron foundry at Pinhook 

 and his kitchen ware was so satisfactory that ''the name 

 of Solomon Leonard was known in every household." 

 When later he retired from business he maintained "a 

 small furnace at Bryant's Pond, where he made small 

 castings to pass away the time.'^ So it seems probable 



