Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/709

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SKETCH OF GEORGE LINCOLN GOOD ALE.
691

feeling, can find any pleasure in ornamenting herself with, a dead bird, whose joyous and harmless life has been cruelly extinguished for her sake. Yet it is a sad fact that thousands of women go around with decorations thus procured, and hundreds of thousands of lovely and useful birds are killed for them. Against this neither words directed to the understanding, lessons on the value of birds, nor warnings appealing to the heart, are of effect; human vanity prevails over all, and triumphant fashion comes off victor. Nothing promises to be effective against it but a positive legal prohibition. Will not our intelligent, warm-hearted women come out with tact and decision against this abuse, and exert their influence upon the wider circle of those who are less judicious but mean well?

Happily, it is among most men only thoughtlessness and consequent indifference, and in only a narrow circle sheer selfishness, that has permitted the neglect or refusal of effective protection to birds.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Ueber Land und Meer.

SKETCH OF GEORGE LINCOLN GOODALE.

GEORGE LINCOLN GOODALE was born at Saco, York County, Maine, August 3, 1839. His father, Hon. S. L. Goodale, for about twenty years the Secretary of the Maine Board of Agriculture, is widely known as the author of a standard work on the Breeding of Domestic Animals, and as an agricultural chemist. His mother was a lineal descendant of Rebecca Towne (Nourse), of witchcraft times in Salem.

During his preparation for college, he served as apprentice in an apothecary-store, his grandfather's business, and acquired a good knowledge of the pharmacy of that day. He entered Amherst College in 1856, and graduated in 1860 in the class with Prof. Estey and President Francis A. Walker. After graduation, he remained for a year connected with the college as assistant in chemistry and botany. His teacher in the latter department was the late Prof. Tuckerman. In Tuckerman's Catalogue of the Plants of Amherst and Vicinity the author refers to the excursions made with Mr. Goodale during the years from 1856 to 1861. Among the other teachers then in Amherst College who exerted a marked influence upon the tastes and work of Mr. Goodale should be mentioned the late President Edward Hitchcock and his son Charles, now of Dartmouth, Prof. C. U. Shepard the mineralogist, President Seelye, and the venerable Prof. William S. Tyler.

Being a rapid short-hand writer, he was at one period in his