18 
WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS 
Carnegie Laboratory at Tortugas I was much impressed with 
his broad kindliness and tolerance of spirit and with his interest 
in the world. The force and independence of his character also 
were obvious and it was clear that he would have been a deep 
student of living things under any conditions of life. He was a 
thinker even more than an observer. He was the follower of no 
school, and few men have been so little dominated by the thoughts 
of the world around them. 
Still it was not his power and originality alone that made him 
great and reverenced among us. It was his spirit that led us 
onward in our science. The little boy who studied dragon flies 
in the pool of his father's yard had had many years pass over him, 
yet in his simple wondering love of nature he remained as in his 
childhood days. This deep reverence for the universe of which 
he felt he formed so small a part, made him careless of many things 
we deem important in our daily life, for his thoughts were not 
apon things of the moment but were far beyond in the border- 
land between the known and the unknown. 
THE CHESAPEAKE ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY' 
Professor Brooks' early experience at Penikese under Louis 
Agassiz must have had a great effect upon him. From that time 
on his interest in marine zoology was one of the dominant influ- 
ences in his life. One of his first important acts at the Johns 
Hopkins University was to organize (in 1878) a movable seaside 
station under the name of the Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory 
and during the following twenty-eight years he was constantly 
to be found during the warmer season at some point on the 
coast or in the West Indies accompanied by a party of students, 
all engaged in the study of marine life. 
The importance of this Laboratory in the development of the 
biological department of the Johns Hopkins University and in 
the general advance of zoology in America may be estimated from 
the large number of students who worked at the laboratory and 
" Professor E. G. Conklin, Princeton University, in National Academy 
Biographical Memoirs, vol. 7. 
