42 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



General Considerations and Home Life (since 1874). 



As a fact of possibly some psychological interest I may here briefly revert 

 to a handicap with which probably few called to public functions have had, 

 at least in equal degree, to contend. From early boyhood I was painfully 

 embarrassed in the presence of strangers. Later in life attempts to present 

 papers verbally before scientific societies were always unsatisfactory and 

 often failures, not from lack of familiarity with the details of the subject 

 but from embarrassment. The same timidity prohibited my seriously 

 considering teaching as a possible means of raising funds to aid in meeting 

 the expenses of an education, or of giving public lectures for the same pur- 

 pose, as many of my associates at the Agassiz Museum were doing, with 

 both pleasure and profit. The ordeal of an examination for a degree at the 

 Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard was sufficient to banish all aspiration 

 for such honors. This in part, perhaps, led to a feeling of disrespect for 

 this sort of a label, and to the belief that any worthy accomplishment 

 would, sooner or later, receive due recognition. My wants were simple and 

 inexpensive ; all I aspired to was opportunity for scientific research, believ- 

 ing that diligence, singleness of purpose, and honest work would bring its 

 own reward. I was content to follow my own lines of dominating interest 

 to such limit as the circumstances of earning a living would permit. I never 

 had any desire for money as such, nor any interest whatever in financial 

 projects, nor any longing for honors beyond those my colleagues in science 

 saw fit to impose. Therefore my election, in the course of time, to all of 

 the leading academies of science in this country, and to honorary member- 

 ship in foreign societies with which my lines of study were affiliated, have 

 always come as exceedingly pleasant surprises. The greatest surprise of 

 all, however, was the reception of a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1886, 

 the first intimation of which was the receipt from its president, David Starr 

 Jordan, of the official notification that I had been thus honored. 



In looking back to the beginning, it is difficult not to contrast my early 

 surroundings with those of the average youth of today smitten with the 

 nature study 'craze.' As stated in the early part of these notes, I was 

 wholly isolated from everyone having even the slightest biologic interest, 

 with only the inspirations and opportunities afforded by the little red 

 schoolhouse on the hill, in the fifties of the last century, in a neighborhood 

 of small farmers to whom the raising of potatoes and grain was the chief 

 aim of life. My studies were not only selfchosen, but were carried on in 

 odd hours without either advice or encouragement, in contrast with the 

 systematised training of today, from the primary school to the post graduate 



