294 The American Geologist. ^^i^iy, i*-)o 
rope. Oswald Heer, in particular, was one of his most valued 
friends and when his death occurred a few years since, Dr. 
Lesquereux felt as if a brother had been stricken down. Pro- 
fessor Guyot's departure impressed him in the same way. The 
death of his beloved wife occurred not far from these dates 
and the world began to look empty to him. The sentiment 
jampridem inutilis annos demoror, began to find frequent ex- 
pression in his conversation. "I belong to a past generation," 
he would say, "my friends and contemporaries are all gone; 
for what do I remain?" But, although almost impatient for 
the summons to cross the bar, he never for a monent lost his 
serenity and never, until the busy brain at last gave way, aban- 
doned his tasks. He died in his modest home in Columbus, 
October 25, 1889, aged nearly 83 years. 
He was modest in his estimate of his own work. All the 
knowledge that has been attained in the departments of which 
he knew most, seemed, in his later years, very small to him. 
"/know a little,'''' he sometimes said, "other students of science 
know each a little, but the whole of what is known is but frag- 
mentary and insignificant, — merely a few pebbles picked up 
along the ocean shore." 
Dr. Lesquereux was a devout Christian believer ; he lived 
and died in the communion of the Lutheran church. He ex- 
tended his creed to take in all scientific discoveries, but he did 
not count any of its essentials disturbed thereby. He seems 
never to have been reached by the currents of modern thought 
which have overflowed the old foundations for so many. 
It is a pleasure to add that his noble library, largely com- 
posed of presentation copies of the most valuable paleonto- 
logical works of the last half century, will be maintained in- 
tact. It has been purchased with this intent through the en- 
lightened public spirit of P. W. Huntington, Esq., of Colum- 
bus, and will be placed where it can be fully available for the 
purposes of science. 
Dr. Lesquereux was personally known to but few residents 
of the city in which the last forty years of his life were spent, 
but he was respected and honored by a much wider number 
and there were mau}^ that felt, when he was borne out of his 
huml)le cottage to his last resting place that an illustrious cit- 
izen had passed from among us. 
The fact's for this sketch have been derived from conversa- 
