HOLBROOK
HOLDER
Society of Edinburgh; of the Royal Soci-
ety of Northern Antiquarians, Copen-
hagen; of the Society of Naturforschende
Freunde, Berlin; and the Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
In 1824 he was elected to the chair of anatomy in the Medical College of South Carolina.
Dr. Holbrook began to practise in Boston, Massachusetts. After a brief stay in this city he went to Europe and spent two years at Edinburgh and about two more in England, France and Ger- many. While in Paris he spent several months studying in the Jardin des Plantes where he become acquainted with Cuvier and formed intimacies with such men as Valenciennes, Dum£ril and Bibron, from whom he imbibed the inspiration of his life.
He returned to America in 1S22 and settling at Charleston, South Carolina, practised there. Here his ability and his irresistible personal charm soon won for him a full measure of success. So delicate and sympathetic was his nature that he never attended an obstetric case nor performed an surgical operation if it was possible to avoid it because of the pain it caused him to witness the suffer- ings of others.
In 1S24 he was active in the establish- ment of the Medical College of South Car- olina, in which institution he lectured for thirty years. Unsurpassed as a lecturer, possessing in an eminent degree the fac- ulty of uniting accurate description with a rare grace of expression he made the dull details of anatomy glow with an un- suspected beauty. But his real life work was his "Monograph upon the Reptiles of the United States." This work was completed in 1842 and embraced de- scriptions and illustrations of one hun- dred and forty-seven nominal species, few of which "have proved to be other than real species in the present sense of the figure." Dr. Holbrook named twenty-nine new species most of which are still retained with his specific names.
He subsequently devoted his attention to a companion work on fishes. His
original plan comprehended a description
of the fishes of South Carolina, Georgia
and Florida, but later was narrowed
down to the fishes of South Carolina.
After the publication of this work was be-
gun, a fire in the "Artists' Building"
in Philadelphia interrupted its progress.
A new edition was then undertaken with
finer and more accurate illustrations, but
only a portion was completed when the
outbreak of the Civil War terminated his
scientific labors.
He married Miss Harriott Pinckney Rutledge in 1827. He had no children. He died in his sister's home at Norfolk, Massachusetts, in 1871.
His chief works were "American Ich- thyology," *part ii, New York and Lon- don, 1847; "Ichthyology of South Car- olina," Charleston, South Carolina, 1855; "Ichthyology of South Carolina," vol. i, Charleston, South Carolina, I860;
R. W., Jr.
An excellent biographical sketch by Theodore Gill was published by the National Academy of Science in vol. v., Biographical Me
Holder, Joseph Bassett (1S24-1SS8).
Joseph Bassett Holder was perhaps the best known naturalist of his time in New England. A son of Aaron L. and Rachel Bassett Holder, he was born at Lynn, Massachusetts, October 26, 1S24, a descendant of Christopher Holder, who, in 1656, introduced the first Society of Friends into America. He studied medicine at Harvard, was the founder of the Lynn Natural History Society, and early made collections and lists of the fauna of Massachusetts. A voluminous writer, he was the author of a number of important books, and brought his ripe experience into play at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, entering into the work with all the ardor of his chief, Prof. A. S. Brickmore, and continuing there until his death in New York in 1888. He devoted the best years of his life to the arduous work of upbuilding and caring for the big collec- tions which soon came to hand.
He was serving as an army surgeon at
