The Courier
Volume 32, No. 21
(2008)
Addison
Emery Verrill
Eminent Zoologist
by Stanley Russell Howe
Addison
E. Verrill (1839-1927)
One of the most eminent zoologists of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, Addison Emery Verrill was born on Patch Mountain, Greenwood,
Maine, on 9 February 1839, the second son of George Washington and Lucy
Hillborn Verrill. He was prepared for college by his own efforts
at
self education and at the Norway Liberal Institute in Norway, Maine,
where his family lived after 1853. Entering Harvard College in
1859, he
was an assistant to Louis Agassiz from 1860 to 1864—two years after
his graduation from the Lawrence Scientific School with his B.S.
degree. As an undergraduate, he spent several summers in field
work
with Alpheus Hyatt and Nathaniel S. Shaler doing field work in Maine,
Labrador, and the islands of Anticosti and Grand Manan. In 1864,
he was
called to Yale University to become the first professor of zoology in
the United States. He remained in the post until his retirement
in 1907
as professor emeritus. For fourteen years (1870-1894), he also
taught
at the Sheffield Scientific School and during two years (1868-1870), he
acted as professor of entomology and comparative anatomy at the
University of Wisconsin.
On 15 June 1865, Verrill married Flora Louisa
Smith
of Norway, Maine, sister of his associate Sidney I. Smith. His
Report upon
the Invertebrate Animal of
Vineyard
Sound and Adjacent Waters was
published in 1873, the first extensive ecological study of the maritime
invertebrates of the southern New England coast and for years a
standard reference work. For sixteen years (1871-1887), he was in
charge of the scientific work of the United States Commission of Fish
and Fisheries in southern New England. In this connection, he
designed
a cradle sieve, a rake dredge, and a rope tangle for collecting
starfish in oyster beds. His scientific studies were interrupted
for
several years by his work in preparing zoological definitions for the
revised edition of Webster’s
International Dictionary (1890). During
the ensuing years, he investigated the invertebrate life of the
northern New England coast, the Gulf Stream, Pacific Coast of Central
America, the Bermudas, and the West Indies. Everywhere he turned,
his
discerning eyes found new types of animal life which others had
overlooked. He once estimated, for example, that he had
discovered over
a thousand undescribed forms. Much of his most important work
appeared
after his retirement in 1907 at the age of sixty eight. When he
was
eighty five and still vigorous, he extended his studies to the Hawaiian
Islands, and during the next two years discovered many new
species.
Shortly after this time, his health declined at the end of his eighty
eighth year, and he died at Santa Barbara, California, survived by four
of his
six children.
Over a period of more than sixty years, Addison Verrill's publications
covered
a wide
range of subjects, but the majority dealt with marine
invertebrates—among them sponges, corals, sea-stars, worms, mollusks
and
representatives of other groups. In addition to his noteworthy
achievements in the classification of marine invertebrates, he built up
a large zoological collection in the Peabody Museum at Yale, of which
he was the curator for over forty years (1867-1910) and served as the
editor of the American Journal of
Science for more than fifty years
(1869-1920). He was an early member of the National Academy of
Sciences
and of a number of other American and foreign learned societies.
For
several years, he was president of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
Tall, with thick, wavy hair, and piercing blue eyes, he is recalled as
a man with an impressive memory, an encyclopedic mind, and an uncanny
aptitude for close discrimination. He possessed great skill in
drawing,
producing with little apparent effort detailed sketches of the most
intricate structures of numerous organisms. In contrast to some
of his
contemporaries, he was ever the patient and painstaking investigator,
fully capable of providing an impressive number of details with
remarkable clarity and order. He was never satisfied with
obtaining his
knowledge of animals under purely laboratory conditions alone, but
ventured forth in many parts of the world to view specimens in their
natural settings.
From an article in the Oxford County
Advertiser for 24 July 1914, it can be
determined that he began his scientific researches early in life.
While
living in Norway as a student (1853-55), he made collections of Maine
minerals, insects, plants, mammals, birds, and reptiles. During
his
explorations in the hills of Oxford County, he discovered and
identified a number of rare minerals not before known in Maine,
including tin ore at Paris, zircon and corundum in Greenwood,
chrysoberyl in large crystals in Norway and Amazon stones in
Waterford.
A little later, in 1859, he added several species of flowering plants
to the flora of the United States as recorded in Gray’s Botany. His
catalog of the birds of Norway, published in 1862, was the first
general list of birds of Maine.
In the Oxford County Advertiser
for 7 August 1914, Verrill recalled his
years living in Greenwood City from 1845 to 1853, except for one year
(1852) when he resided in Locke’s Mills. He remembered that
during this
time there were “two stores, two taverns with large stables, etc.,
about six dwelling houses, a saw mill (in ruins after 1849), a grist
mill, a shingle mill, a school house and a church.” The entire
village
except for the church, which stood a little north of the rest of the
village, was destroyed by fire in May 1862.
Described by the Dictionary of
American Biography as “one of the
greatest systematic zoologists of America,” Addison Emery Verrill had
so few students
following his appointment in 1864 that he taught historical physical
geology from 1870 to 1894. As one observer noted, it was
“unfortunate”
that such an “able investigator” as Verrill was “burdened” with “so
much routine teaching.” Nevertheless, Verrill’s enthusiasm for
making
scientific discoveries and meticulously recording them continued
throughout the
entire span of his life, beginning with youth and extending to advanced
old age. So, from Patch Mountain to Yale and on to many parts of
the
world, Addison E. Verrill made his mark on the larger world.
Brooks Mather Kelley,
in his Yale: A History (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), considers Verrill as “by far
the most important” of the noteworthy scientists appointed during the
latter half of the 19th century at Yale.