JOHN CASPER BRANNER 
261 
of a lifetime, he also acquired a large collection of South Amer¬ 
ican literature. His interests were almost cosmopolitan and 
world-wide. His influence through some of his former students 
and associates can be felt in all parts of the world today. We 
miss him greatly here at the University. In his later years he 
added a fine touch of wholesome and patriarchal dignity and sin¬ 
cerity to the life of the Stanford campus. During his illness the 
little children expressed the love for him that all felt.’’ 
Dr. J. M. Stillman notes: “As a teacher Professor Branner 
exerted upon his students an influence which inspired them to 
their best efforts. His broad experience, his own systematic and 
untiring research, his realization of the supreme importance of 
practical experience as the final test of all theories, were well 
calculated to stimulate the ability and energy of his students, 
while his simple, sincere, and sympathetic personality attached 
them to him with a rare devotion. The distinguished careers 
of many of his students evidence the efficiency of his teaching. 
His ideals of the geologist’s training were high. They demanded 
breadth of culture. In a wholly admirable address on the ‘Train¬ 
ing of a Geologist,’ given before the Indiana Academy of Sciences, 
in 1889, he says: ‘The man who goes into Geology because there 
is money in it, will, in nine cases out of ten, make a failure of 
it — he will get neither the money nor the geology. To be sure, 
a living must be had, but he who has the right training and the 
right interest in his work will never lack for lucrative employment 
for any considerable length of time. . . . The world is too 
full of problems of a scientific interest for any man having a 
scientific spirit to stand idle for a single day, or a single hour, 
and no one having such a spirit will stand idle.’ Again he says: 
‘The man who has no notion of accepting the results of his 
reasoning would just as well not reason at all, while the man 
who undertakes to reason within certain limits insults his intel¬ 
ligence. All honest men are seeking the truth and is it not our 
duty to help others in this search when we can ? We may be sure 
that if we wait till all the world thinks alike, the world will never 
care what we think.’ 
“These public addresses of Dr. Branner — none too many of 
them are published — contain much that is autobiographical, and 
always are expressive of the man himself, for I know no one 
