time, it is important to note that he was enrolled as a student at Penikese under Louis Agassiz, who was not slow to observe the remarkable powers of the young naturalist. In 1874 Jordan returned to Penikese as lecturer in marine botany. In the following year he became Professor of Biology at Butler University, near Indianapolis; in 1879, Professor of Zoölogy at the Indiana University; and in 1885, president of the same institution. This last position he held until 1891, when he was selected as the first President of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
In 1880 Jordan was appointed "Special Agent of the United States Census Bureau" for the investigation of the marine industries of the Pacific coast. In this capacity, with the assistance of Prof. Charles K. Gilbert, Jordan made the first comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the fishes, both fresh-water and marine, of our Occidental seaboard. The records of the scientific discoveries made in the course of this survey are scattered through many bulletins of the United States Fish Commission, while the chief economic results are recorded in the section of the Tenth Census Report devoted to fisheries.
Of Jordan's hundreds of published works, great and small, but a few of the most important can be enumerated here. The most bulky of them, A Synopsis of the Fishes of North America, is a book of nearly twelve hundred pages, the authorship of which is shared with Prof. Gilbert. The Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States (A. C. McClurg & Co.) has grown through several successive editions from a small pocket volume to a stout octavo of nearly four hundred pages. It is an extremely useful work, and attempts to give such guidance with respect to the classification of vertebrate animals as a botanical key gives with respect to our flora. In his Science Sketches (A. C. McClurg & Co., 1887) are collected several papers and addresses of a popular character. Noteworthy among them are The Story of a Salmon (first published in this magazine). The Story of a Stone (first published in St. Nicholas), Darwin, and The Ascent of the Matterhorn. Some of these sketches are marked by a union of sound knowledge, with a whimsical humor and delicate fancy which is sufficiently rare among men, whether scientific or literary, and which goes far to convince readers that Jordan might have attained a place in literature perhaps as distinguished as his place in science.
What always strikes even a casual observer in Jordan is that he seldom does things as other men do them. If it can not always be said that his way is the best, his unfailing success attests that it is anyhow the best for him. In bearing, phrase, turn of wit, and simplicity of life, he is unique, and that without the slightest affectation of originality. This was true of him as a student. He
