160 
CALL’S GEOLOGICAL WORK 
They contained half a hundred books on geology and natural 
history — publications of the Smithsonian, the Geological Surveys, 
and Government Exploring Expeditions. Accompanying them 
was a cordial personal letter from the distinguished Secretary 
of the Institution, warmly thanking me for the fine collections. 
This parcel of books at once formed the nucleus of '‘Dear Boy’s” 
library, which grew apace with the advancing years, and today, 
forty years after, still holds honor place in his den. 
Years later, when visiting the Smithsonian one day. Secretary 
Walcott called me aside and led me to a display of shells which 
he had noticed a few days before — Iowa shells all with my name 
attached. They greeted me after half a century as old friends. 
But their guardian spirit had already passed to his reward. 
Call was indeed a naturalist of the most versatile type. This 
very fact prevented him from concentrating effort deeply upon 
any one thing for any length of time. His exceptionally alert 
mind and normal great activity thus largely spent their force 
unavailingly. His efforts were bent along the line of the formal 
systematist rather than that of the philosopher. Within him 
product rather than process was the all-important desideratum. 
He was widely read; and of biological topics his knowledge almost 
bordered on the uncanny. There were few fields of science in 
which he could not discourse intelligently and at length in all their 
genetic, developmental and taxonomic aspects. 
He was what is generally called a Bohemian, although always 
with serious ambitions. He was brilliant talker whether in a small 
company or on the lecture platform, fully able at the moment 
to turn his vast knowledge to account. His conversation abounded 
in lively anecdote told with infinite zest; he was thoroughly genial 
and ready at good humored repartee; and he was never hampered 
by any -excessive reverence for ancestral proprieties. Even an 
ordinary social gathering must have consisted of very ponderous 
interests if it could not be stirred into animation by a man with 
so much more quicksilver in his veins than falls to the lot of the 
' average citizen. 
Call was generous to a fault, helpful beyond measure, and 
thoroughly sympathetic. As a teacher he was seemingly without 
a peer. It was perhaps from this angle that the value of his 
great services should be judged rather than from that of cold, 
copious and creative productivity. 
