Biography of Fielding Bradford Meek. — White. 841 
have passed since he laid down his j-jen have not diminished 
the esteem in which they are held by those competent to judge 
of their merit. It is enough to say that thoroughness, scru- 
pulous exactness, nice powers of discrimination, and a com- 
prehensive grasp of his subject, are manifested in all his writ- 
ings; and with such merits his works will shed luster upon 
his name as long as paleontology shall be studied. 
Mr. Meek was never robust in health, and for a large part 
of his life he was an invalid, his malady being pulmonary 
tuberculosis. As age advanced his periods of exhaustion be- 
came more frequent and more pronounced until they ended in 
death. He died in AVashington on the 21st of December, 
1876, and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery, in the 
eastern suburb of Washington. His funeral was held in a 
hall of the Smithsonian Institution, professor Henry having 
delivered the funeral oration. In person he was moderately 
tall, rather slender, of erect and dignified bearing, but as his 
malady increased, his carriage became less free. Although 
he was never strong and often ill he never complained, was 
always cheerful, always hopeful, and always devoted to his 
scientific work, which he dearly loved. He was genial and 
sincere, pure minded and honorable. Gentleness and candor 
were apparent in every lineament of his face and in every 
word he uttered; but he was self reliant and ready at all 
times to defend what he believed to be right, and witli his 
keen sense of justice he was seldom mistaken as to what was 
right. 
His hearing began to fail in early manhood and the afflic- 
tion increased until total deafness occurred, several years be- 
fore his death. The paleobotanist, Lesquereux, who was also 
deaf during a great part of his life, learned to converse orally 
by .watching the motion of the lips of the speaker, but Mr. 
Meek never learned to do this, and he even seemed averse to 
the use or recognition of any conventional signs. Still, he 
was always read}' and eager to converse with his friends, and 
he always kept at hand a pad of paper and a pencil for their 
use. 
Although he was thus cut off from the oral conversation of 
l)is friends he never referred to it as a hardship. Because of this 
affliction, however, and of his natural diffidence, he rarelv, if 
