| SKETCH OF ALPHEUS SPRING PACKARD. |
By Professor J. S. KINGSLEY.
THE influence which Louis Agassiz had in the development of American science is to be estimated not by his published works, but by the enthusiasm he instilled into all who came under his instruction. In the years from 1861 to 1864 there were gathered at Cambridge as his pupils eight men, each of whom has made a name for himself in science. These eight were Alexander Agassiz, Alpheus Hyatt, Edward Sylvester Morse, Alpheus Spring Packard, Frederick Ward Putnam, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, and Addison Emory Verrill.
Alpheus Spring Packard, the subject of the present sketch, is one of the four sons of the venerated Prof. Packard who for over sixty years was connected with the faculty of Bowdoin College. He was born at Brunswick, Me., February 19, 1839, and at the age of eighteen entered the college where his father was a professor. While a student he evinced a marked predilection for natural history, a tendency which was fostered and encouraged by the late Dr. Paul A. Chadbourne, who at that time was a professor in both Williams and Bowdoin Colleges. At Williams there was a flourishing students' society, the Lyceum of Natural History, which at this time had sent out several scientific expeditions, and in the summer of 1860 they laid their plans for another, the objective points of which were Labrador and Greenland. When the expedition set sail from Thomaston, Me., young Packard joined it and went as far as Labrador, where he spent fifty days collecting near Caribou Island. The others went to Greenland, and on their return took him and his collections back to the States in time for him to begin the studies of his senior year. These, however, were not without interruption, for before graduation he led a party of classmates on a dredging and collecting expedition to the Bay of Fundy,
At commencement in 1861 Bowdoin gave him his bachelor's degree, and then the field was opened to him to follow his scientific bent. In the spring of that year the Legislature of Maine had authorized a scientific survey of the State, and Mr. Packard received the appointment of entomologist on the corps. In this capacity he accompanied a party who went up the east branch of the Penobscot and then down the Alleguash and St. John's Rivers as far as Woodstock. With the materials gathered on this expedition Mr. Packard wrote the first of that long series of scientific articles which have emanated from his pen. It was an essay on the army-worm, which at that time was doing considerable damage to agricultural interests in Maine. This paper.
