DR. DAWSON'S LETTER. 



35i 



especially in the long vacation, when, in the absence of the 

 students, he was enabled to spread his materials to any extent 

 that he desired in the Museum rooms and corridors. At this 

 season also, he rejoiced in the facility for opening windows and 

 working almost in the open air, which was rendered easy by 

 the isolation of the College buildings, in grounds remote from 

 the city dust. 



" His plan was to take up his specimens family by family, 

 and to work out the specific forms and synonymy in each, 

 finishing by mounting the whole in his peculiarly beautiful way 

 on glass tablets, in which he was assisted by Andrew Reid, and 

 by boys whom he employed in the mechanical parts of the 

 work. While doing this for the College Collection, he was at 

 the same time naming and arranging the large collections of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, which were sent on to him 

 for the purpose ; and at various times he had in his hands col- 

 lections from the Smithsonian Institution, from the Geological 

 Survey of California,* and from private collectors desirous of 

 availing themselves of his extensive and accurate knowledge. 



" His latest labour was upon the Chitonidce, and before his 

 death he had thoroughly arranged his own extensive collections 

 in this family, and had studied all the other material within his 

 reach ; and he had the notes prepared for a monograph which, 

 when published, will throw great light on this curious group of 

 mollusks, and will reform and settle its classification. This 



* From 1863 he had been a Corresponding Member of the California 

 Academy of Sciences. His friend Mr. Robert E. C. Stearns read before the 

 Academy (July 2, 1877) a tribute to his memory, which was afterwards 

 printed. Speaking of his Reports on the West American Mollusca (see 

 pp. 144, 257), he says, "The labour required in the preparation of these two 

 Reports was very great, and involved the examination of a vast number of 

 works of travel, records of voyages and expeditions, and the publications of 

 various societies ; the examination of numerous museums and private col- 

 lections, and the elaboration of synonymy and the correlation of data scat- 

 tered here and there in a multitude of volumes, in various public and private 

 libraries. As one of the many who have been greatly benefited by Dr. Car- 

 penter's work, I can say with truth, that these conscientiously thorough 

 compilations, made all the more valuable by his judicious comments and 

 methodical arrangement, are of inestimable importance to the student, for 

 they constitute a bibliography of the subject, a starting-point and guide 

 for subsequent investigations. " 



