MERRIAM
MERRIAM
in the school of philosophy, and one of the senior
instructors in the school of arts. He was the
director of the American Scliool of Classical
Studies at A.thens, Greece, 1887-88. and as such
superintended the excavations at Sicyon and
Icaria, and succeeded in locating the much-dis-
puted birthplace of Thespis at Icaria. He also
carried on excavations in the theatre of Sicyon,
and in his investigations discovered many valuable
pieces of sculpture and inscriptions, including an
important statue. In 1883 he discovered several
errors in the Greek and Latin inscriptions placed
on the restored bronze crabs under the obelisk in
Central Park, which were afterward corrected.
He was president of the American Philological
association, 1886-87, and of the New York Society
of the Archaeological Institute of America. 1891-
94. He received the degree Ph.D. from Hamilton
college in 1879. He was an a.s80ciate editor of the
American Journal of Archceology, edited tlie
papers of the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, contributed to the American
Journal of Philology^ the American Journal of
Archceology, and to editions of the Odyssey and
Herodotus, and is the autlior of : TJie Greek and
Latin Inscriptions on the Obelisk Crab in Central
Park (1883), and The Laiv Code of Gortyna in
Crete: Text, Translation and Comment (1886).
He died in Athens, Greece, Jan. 19, 1895.
MERRIAM, Charfes, publisher, was born in West Brookfield, Mass., Nov. 21, 1806 ; son of Dan and Xhirza (Clapp) Merriam ; grandson of Ebenezer and Margaret (Jefferson) Merriam, and a descendant of Joseph Merriam, Concord, Mass. 1638. Dan Merriam with his brother Ebenezer published a newspaper in West Brookfield, Mass., 1789-92, and they also conducted a printing busi- ness and book store, and became widely known as the publishers of law books. Perry's Diction- ary and an octavo Bible. Charles attended the district schools of West Brookfield and worked on the farm until 1820 ; was apprenticed to Wil- liam Goodwin, a printer in Hartford, Conn., 1820- 23, and on his father's death in 1823, returned to West Brookfield and completed his apprentice- ship with the firm of E. & G. Merriam. He attended the academies at Monson and Hadley, Mass., 1826-27, taught school in South Brookfield, and worked at his trade in Philadelphia, Pa., 1827-29, and was a journeyman printer and after- ward foreman in the office of T. R. Marvin, Boston, 1829-31. In the latter year his brother George sold his interest in the West Brookfield firm, and with his brother Charles established the book-printing and bookselling business of G. & C. Merriam in Springfield, Mass. Among other books they published Webster's Dictionary, having bought the copyright of J. S. and C. Adams, of Amherst, Mass., in 1845. They issued the dic-
tionary first in 1847 and sold it for $6.00, and made
such a success of the enterprise that between
1845 and 1895 the Webster heirs received nearly
$300,000 as royalties. He sold out his share in
the firm in 1877. He gave $50,000 to missions and
other philanthropic subjects, a public library
and book fund to West Brookfield, his native
place, and contributed $5,000 toward the estab-
lishment of a public library in Springfield. He
was married, Aug. 11, 1835, to Sophia, daughter
of Col. Solomon Warriner, of Springfield, who
died in 1858, and secondly, to Mrs. Rachel Gray,
the widow of Dr. James Harrison Gray. He died
in Springfield, Mass., July 9, 1887.
MERRIAM, Clinton Hart, naturalist, was born in New York city, Dec. 5, 1855 ; son of Clinton Levi and Caroline (Hart) Merriam. He studied at Williston seminary, Easthampton. Mass., 1873- 74, and at the Sheffield Scientific school, Yale, 1874-77. He was naturalist of the Hayden survey in 1872, and assistant, U.S. fish commission, in 1875. He was graduated at the College of Physi- cians and Surgeons in New York city in 1879, and practised medicine at Locust Grove, N.Y., 1879- 85. He served as surgeon on board, the U.S.S. Proteus on a visit to the Arctic seal fisheries in 1883 and sailed from Newfoundland ; and in 1885 became chief of the division of ornithology and mammalogy (now the biological survey) of the U.S. department of agriculture, his special lines of research being the geographic distribution of animals and plants in North America, and sys- tematic studies of North American mammals. In 1889 he made a biological survey of the San Francisco mountain region of Arizona, and sub- sequently conducted many such explorations in the west. He visited Alaska in 1891-92, as one of the U.S. Bering Sea commissioners to inves- tigate the fur seal on Pribilof Islands, and again in 1899 on the Harriman Alaska expedition. He was married, Oct. 15, 1886, to Virginia Elizabeth Gosnel. He described about 500 new species of North American mammals and wrote about 300 papers on biological subjects, including a " Mono- graphic revision of the Pocket Gophers " (Geomy- dae) (1895) ; a *' Revision of the American Shrews " (1895) ; a " Synopsis of Weasels of North America," and numerous others. He is the author of : Birds of Connecticut (1877) ; Mammals of the Adirondacks (1884) ; Residts of a Biological Survey of the San Francisco Mountain Region and Desert of Little Colorado in Arizona (1890) ; Geographic Distribution of Life in North America (1892) ; Results of the Death Valley Expedition (1893) ; Laivs of Temperature Control of Geo- graphic Distribution of Terrestrial Animals and Plants (1894) ; Life Zones and Crop Zones of the United States (1898) ; and Biological Survey of Mount Shasta, California (1899).