THE MUSEUM. 
55 
“ Whatever others may have thought of his various acquirements, he had no 
inflated or egotistical opinion of himself. Once, when one ventured to say that he 
was ‘ a very remarkable man,’ he denied the ‘ soft impeachment,’ replying that, con¬ 
sidering the advantages he had had, compared with others, he did not know half as 
much as he ought to have known; continuing, ‘there is Blank, without education, 
with a large family to support by his daily toil, and with no means but the results of 
that toil; that he should have accomplished what he has is remarkable.’ ” 
Prof. Haldeman devoted the greater portion of his life to the study of languages, 
and he finally became one of the most eminent linguists of his time. Not only was he 
perfectly familiar with all of the languages now spoken throughout the civilized world, 
but he was also well versed in the dead and Oriental tongues, and in a number of 
American Indian dialects. His remarkably flexible organs of speech enabled him to 
articulate the peculiar clicking and guttural sounds of the latter, which are usually so 
difficult for a white man to acquire. At a fancy ball in Paris he talked, through a mask, to 
a savant in all the principal European languages. His companion tried in vain to guess 
his nationality, so the story goes, and finally said, jokingly, that he must be a Russian, 
whereupon the Professor quoted a verse in Russ so correctly that the Russian gen¬ 
tleman could hardly be convinced afterwards that he had been talking to an Ameri¬ 
can. In 1851 he was elected Professor of Natural History in the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania. In 1855 he accepted a professorship in Delaware College, and afterwards 
filled the chair of Comparative Philology in the first-named institution. He was also 
appointed to other professorships in this country and in Europe, and assisted in edit¬ 
ing a number of scientific publications, besides holding other positions of honor and 
distinction. His principal labors were in mineralogy, geology, conchology, orni¬ 
thology, entomology and anthropology. He used to say that he seldom devoted 
more than ten years to one branch of natural history. After he had thoroughly 
mastered that, he would lay it aside to take up a new one. In this systematic manner 
he accomplished, perhaps, more than any other living naturalist. His knowledge 
covered a multitude of subjects, and he was a recognized authority in each one of them. 
While yet a young man he achieved considerable fame by winning the prize, 
offered by Sir William Trevellyan, for the best essay on reform in the spelling of 
English, over a score of European philologists. He was ever exploring out-of-the 
way and unthought-of subjects. His originality was apparently limitless. 
In a letter to a friend, dated April 15th, 1876, Prof. Haldeman relates how he ^ 
came to extend his investigations to archaeological matters. He writes, “ My line of 
studies is beads (ancient and modern) and materials used for beads and necklaces, a 
subject to which you allude in your contribution to Hayden’s Report. Last year I 
searched curiosity shops in Europe and made notes in the museums, while here, I 
have specimens from Indian graves. More recently, in searching for beads in a 
rock recess near my house, I came upon a pre-historic residence, without beads or 
any European object, but with numerous fragments of clay pottery and stone imple¬ 
ments, including grain pounders, arrows, flakes, hatchets, pebbles broken for arrows, 
