Cliorlcs Hincrsoii l^ccchcr. — Clarke. 5 
Paleontology, Bcechcr's appearance in those volumes here end- 
ed, lie had done no Httle to refine and advance the work, but 
his reward was his experience and with this he seemed fullv 
content. 
During- this period however he was ])usicd with various 
other thing-s. He had not wholly lost his keen interest in the 
terrestrial mollusca and he kept in close touch with students 
and collectors in the east, adding considerably to an already 
very extensive collection of these shells which eveu'iially he 
gave to the State Museum. He had made himself expert in 
microscopic technic and some of his fine mountings of the 
radulas of gastropods were the subject of contributions to 
conchological papers. He undertook the microphotcgraphy 
of fossils with success, and he became much interested in 
human histology and anatomy. 
In these days and always Beecher was a keen collector of 
fossils. He had not the physical strength for the omnivorous 
and ponderous effort of that kind but he was the most dis- 
criminating acquirer of the unusual, the exceptional and the 
fine, that it has been my fortune to know. In those days at 
the Albany museum the private collection was permitted, it 
was indeed to the assistant an outlet for individual endeavor 
and a basis for extra-official labor and research. He held with 
the rest of us firmly to the belief that a student of natural sci- 
ence Avithout a private collection or at least the impulse to it 
was in danger of becoming either a starveling or a machine. As 
a student of paleontology, however, new species were inter- 
esting" him less and less ; it was something new about old 
species that he sought and these new facts were acquired by 
various avenues and new devices. 
In looking over the list of his early papers one sees how 
gradually he was finding himself. Of the 13 publications 
issued before he left Albanv for New Haven the majority were 
conchological. only four can be regarded as paleontological, yet 
this may be somewhat due to the very evident sense of repres- 
sion he felt along the line of the latter. 
A part of Mr Beecher's fine natural equipment for s- ientific 
research was his indomitable patience necessary to establish 
broad premises. His conclusions were never hasty nor ever 
stated on merely one aspect of the evidence. All the more 
