Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/272

262 without date or location. He was naturally careless or unmethodical, and his citations of other authors' works can not safely be trusted without verification, and are usually incomplete. He had a very poor memory, and on several occasions had redescribed his own species. This defect increased with age, and, while no question of willful misstatement need arise, made it impossible to place implicit confidence in his own recollections of such matters as dates of publication. He himself says in a characteristic letter to F. B. Meek, written in July, 1863: ‘I go on Monday to help H ferret out my skulking species of Palæozoic shells. May the recording angel help me! God and I knew them once, and the Almighty may know still. A man's memory is no part of his soul.’

“In spite of this constitutional defect, Conrad had an acute and observant eye, and an excellent, if sometimes hasty, judgment on matters of geology and classification. He was in advance of his time in discriminating genera, and in field researches and work on the specimens showed more than ordinary capacity. In those branches of his work which required knowledge of literature and systematic research he took less interest and pains.

“Like many shy people, he was brought rather than ventured into numerous controversies, which are now ancient history, and need not be further alluded to. But the sketch just given will enable readers to understand the origin of much that is irritating to those who are obliged to rely upon Conrad's work and find in it slips and errors so obvious that they seem unpardonable. He had the defects of his qualities, but whether for good or evil he was the principal worker in the field of Tertiary geology in America for many years. He has left a voluminous literature, and neither his faults nor his virtues can by any method be ignored.”

When Darwin's Origin of Species was published, Conrad became intensely interested in the discussions that wonderful book provoked. He did not take the theory up as subject-matter for an essay; but contented himself with innumerable notes and memoranda that I found on loose slips of paper after his death. He was bitterly opposed to evolution; considered Agassiz the world's greatest naturalist, and predicted that Darwin's “wild speculations” would soon be forgotten. Every geological age came, Conrad held, to a complete close, and the life of the succeeding one was a wholly new creation. These utterly crude and untenable views he held to, to the last.

It would be unjust to the memory of the subject of this sketch to pass over without notice his characteristics as a man and author. Conrad was something besides a profound paleontologist. This his friends well knew: but for the writer of this sketch to