Thomas Mayo Brewer. 
103 
daily press. Having previously retired from editorial life, in 1857 
he became a partner in the publishing firm of Swan and Tileston, and 
for some years was at the head of the well-known house of Brewer 
and Tileston. In 1875 he retired from business, and passed the next 
two years abroad, during which time he made many warm friends 
among the scientific men of England and the Continent. 
His great interest in all matters relating to popular education led 
to his election, as early as 1844, to the Boston School Board, and 
at the time of his death he had been recently rechosen for the term 
of three years to the reorganized board, of which he was the senior 
member. His fidelity to the duties of this and other public trusts 
was conspicuous. 
During this long period of engrossing professional, commercial, 
and official engagements, he still maintained an active interest in 
ornithological pursuits, as is fully evinced by his frequent contribu- 
tions to the literature of American ornithology. The department of 
oology, in its broader sense, was the rather restricted field in which 
he labored, and in which he has ever been looked upon as a leading 
authority. To this branch of the general subject his numerous 
scientific papers mainly relate. Aside from his minor contributions 
to the publications of the Boston Society of Natural History, and to 
several of the scientific and literary journals of the day, and which 
cover a period of over forty years, he published in 1840 an edition 
of Wilson’s “American Ornithology,” to which he added, as an 
appendix, a well-digested and useful “ Synopsis ” of the birds known 
at that time as North American. The “Brewer edition” of Wil- 
son, — the only American edition of Wilson’s work, except Ord’s, 
published prior to 1871, — from its small cost, placed this delightful 
treatise within the reach of a wide circle of readers to whom the 
more expensive original and Ord editions were inaccessible, and 
thereby greatly stimulated popular interest in this entertaining de- 
partment of natural history. In addition to the original text of 
Wilson, the Brewer edition included the synonymy and critical com- 
mentary of the well-known Jardine edition. 
In 1857 was published the first part of his “North American 
Oology,” which forms part of Volume IX of the “Smithsonian Con- 
tributions to Knowledge.” The full title of the work — “North 
American Oology ; being an Account of the Geographical Distribu- 
tion of the Birds of North America during the Breeding Season, with 
Figures and Descriptions of their Eggs ” — indicates very fairly its 
