Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/417

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SKETCH OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE.
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the position which he still held at the time of his death. On the death of Prof. Baird, he became for a short time Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. This appointment. Science observed at the time, "meets at once the requirements of an exacting office and the exceptional provision of the law creating it. Prof. Goode is intimately acquainted with the methods of Commissioner Baird, whose scientific zeal and knowledge he shared, and his experience and attainments in practical fish culture and in the science of ichthyology made him first among those whose qualifications the President has been called upon to consider." The law, however, gave no salary for this office, and during the few months Dr. Goode held it he performed the duties of two offices for the pay of one. In time the law was amended, the office of Fish Commissioner was made independent of the National Museum, and Dr. Goode was relieved by the appointment of Marshall McDonald to it.

Most of Prof. Goode's contributions to science were made during his connection with the National Museum, and for information concerning them we are largely indebted to the admirable summaries published by Dr. Marcus Benjamin and Mr. Theodore Gill in Science. In 1876 he published in the Bulletin of the United States Museum a Catalogue of the Fishes of the Bermudas, and the Classification of the Collection to illustrate the Animal Resources of the United States; which latter work was expanded three years afterward into the Catalogue of the Collection to illustrate the Animal Resources and the Fisheries of the United States, a volume nearly three times as large, prepared with reference to the Smithsonian exhibit in the Centennial. He published numerous monographs, many of them in collaboration with Dr. Tarleton Bean, chiefly descriptive of new species of fishes, and some dealing with special groups, of which perhaps the most important was that on the menhaden, first published in the Report of the Fish Commission, and afterward as a separate work. In connection with the tenth census, of 1880, Dr. Goode had charge of the work relating to fish and fisheries; and of the five sections of the seven large quarto volumes comprising the report on that subject he himself mainly prepared Section I, on the Natural History of Aquatic Animals. It covered more than nine hundred pages of text, and was illus rated by two hundred and seventy-seven plates. "This book was intended to reflect as exhaustive an investigation of the subject as possible. The scheme drawn up by Dr. Goode embraced the natural history of marine products; accounts of the fishing grounds, the fishermen and fishing towns, apparatus and modes of capture; preparation, care, and manufacture of fishing products; and economy of the fisheries. For the purposes of the studies necessary to its