No. 601] CHARLES OTIS WHITMAN 



29 



that a taste for the beautiful in form and color had a con- 

 stitutional basis in Charles. 



Musical ability is frequent in the Whitman side of the 

 house. Nearly all of the Whitmans could sing; espe- 

 cially good were his father 's brothers. But Marcia Leon- 

 ard, the mother, could not carry a tune ; and the children 

 were apparently not good singers. Charles tried to learn 

 to play the melodeon when he was a boy, but had no apti- 

 tude for it; his elder sister, however, plays well on the 

 piano and her son is a performer on the violin, of great 

 ability, and a brother of Charles plays the violin well. 



Of mechanical ability Dr. Whitman had more than the 

 average man. His success in mounting birds (in his 

 father's carriage shop) required manual dexterity. His 

 sister recalls that he made a martin house. This ability 

 shows itself again in his interest in methods of micro- 

 scopical research which culminated in a volume— the only 

 book he ever wrote— entitled: ''Methods of Research in 

 Microscopical Anatomy and Embryology," 255 pp., Bos- 

 ton, 1885. Of this book 55 pages are devoted to instru- 

 ments and methods of imbedding, including 28 figures of 

 machinery and apparatus, and pages of descriptions of 

 the principles and details of this apparatus. It is im- 

 probable that Whitman would have collected such ma- 

 terials and written such a book had he not been interested 

 in and had an insight into mechanical devices. This taste 

 he maintained to the end, and he tarried long over a stu- 

 dent who had invented some new instrument.^ This me- 

 chanical insight enabled him to do things in shix>-shape 

 fashion. His charts and general arrangements of his 

 laboratory and breeding pens showed tliis sa>-oir faire. 

 With less mechanical skill the feat of moving lii^ pio-oons 

 to Woods Hole and back each year would hardly have 

 been feasible. AVhitman came from a race of artisans on 

 both sides. His father was a carriage maker ; his father's 

 sister Loney had a son, Edwin, who is a machinist and an- 

 other, Edson, who is overseer in a fabric mill. One of 

 his uncle Cyprian Whitman's sons is an engineer. Of 

 Elhanan ^Vhitman's sons, Austin was a farmer with more 



« Dr. Oscar Eiddle. 



