of the value of the “Proceedings of the Essex Institute,” of the “Annual Reports of the Trustees of the Peabody Academy of Science,” and of the annual volumes of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vols. XXII-XXXIV, is due to his careful editorial supervision. Putnam also was one of the original editors and published Vols. I-IX of the “American Naturalist.”
While brief papers are continually appearing in various scientific serials, it is to the annual reports of the great museum, of which he is the head, that Putnam gives his principal attention. Already ten of these have been published under his direction, and others are in preparation. It is scarcely necessary to add that they contain an immense fund of invaluable archæological knowledge, and must, of necessity, be accessible to every one who would have a thorough knowledge, so far as it can be obtained as yet, of ancient man in America.
A perusal of these reports and a careful examination of the museum's collections at once show the eminent fitness of the man for the place, the method of conducting exploration and exhibiting the results thereof being that which a zoölogist adopts in treating of a purely zoölogical problem. It is not the design of the museum merely to group a vast amount of material together, in series of like objects, to show how varied is man's handiwork, but to let associated objects, as they occur, tell the story of the people who used them. This was the view taken by Professor Wyman in collecting the remains of ancient man from the Florida shell-heaps—he would have removed a shell-heap, bodily, to the museum, had it been practicable—and in this spirit, with by no means sufficient funds to carry on the work, Putnam has continued to labor, and succeeded in gathering a quarter of a million objects from every nook and corner of America.
Recently, the trustees of the Peabody Museum, in carrying out the objects of Mr. Peabody's trust—one of which was the establishment of a professorship of American archæology and ethnology—unanimously nominated Putnam for the position, and the corporation of Harvard College established the professorship.
The mantle of the late lamented Jeffries Wyman could have fallen on no worthier, abler shoulders than those of Frederick Ward Putnam.
