John Mason Clarke
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOLUME XII'—SIXTH MEMOIR BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF JOHN MASON CLARKE BY CHARLES SCHUCHERT PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, 1926 JOHN MASON CLARKE BY CHARLES SCIIUCHERT In the death of John Mason Clarke, America loses its most brilliant, eloquent, and productive paleontologist, and the world its greatest authority on Devonian life and time. Author of more than 10,000 printed pages, distributed among about 450 books and papers, of which 300 deal with Geology, his efforts had to do mostly with pure science, and he often lamented, in the coming generation of doers, the lack of an adequate apprecia- tion of wondrous nature as recorded on the tablets of the earth's crust. He was peculiarly the child of his environment; born on Devonian rocks replete with fossils, in a home of high ideals and learning, situated in a state that has long appreciated science, he rose into the grandeur of geologic knowledge that was his. Clarke is survived by his wife, formerly Mrs. Fannie V. Bosler, of Philadelphia; by Noah T. Clarke, a son by his first wife, who was Mrs. Emma Sill (nee Juel), of Albany; by two stepdaughters, Miss Marie Bosler and Mrs. Edith (Sill) Humphrey, and a stepson, Mr. Frank N. Sill. Out of a family of six brothers and sisters, four remain to mourn his going: Miss Clara Mason Clarke, who, with Mr. S. Merrill Clarke, for many years city editor of the New York Sun, is living in the old homestead at Canandaigua ; Rev. Lorenzo Mason Clarke, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn; and Mr.
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