His chief completed work, the Dissertation on The Cubomedusæ, is here printed; and through it the reader who did not know Conant must decide whether he was well fitted, by training and by natural endowments, for advancing knowledge. I myself felt confident that the career on which he had entered would be full of usefulness and honor. I was delighted when he was appointed to the Adam T. Bruce Fellowship, for I had discovered that he was rapidly becoming an inspiring influence among his fellow students in the laboratory, and I had hoped that we might have him among us for many years, and that we might enjoy and profit by the riper fruits of his more mature labors.
Immediately after his examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in June, 1897, he set out for Jamaica to continue his studies at the laboratory which this University had established for the summer at Port Antonio, and he there worked for nearly three months on the development, and on the physiology of the sense-organs, of the Cubomedusæ.
His notes and specimens are so complete that I hope it will be possible to complete in Baltimore, at an early day, the work which he had expected to carry on this year.
After the sudden and alarming death of the director of the expedition, Dr. J. E. Humphrey, Conant took the burden of responsibility upon himself, and while he fully appreciated his own great danger, he devoted himself calmly and methodically to the service of others who, in their afflictions, needed his help, and he fell in the path of duty, where he had always walked, leaving behind him a clear and simple account of all the business of the laboratory and of his scientific work, and of his own affairs, complete to the day before his death.
Immediately after the opening of the University in October his friends and companions and instructors assembled to express the sorrow with which they had heard the sad news of his death, and to record their love and esteem for the generous, warm-hearted friend who in all the relations of life had proved himself so worthy of their affectionate remembrance. At this meeting those who had worked at his side in our laboratories recalled his steadfast earnestness in the pursuit of knowledge, and the encouragement they had found in his bright example; while those who had been his instructors spoke of him as one who had bettered their instruction and enriched all that he undertook by sound and valuable observations and reflections. While all united in mourning the untimely loss of one who had shown such rich promise of a life full of usefulness and honor and distinction, it was pointed out with pride that his end was worthy of one who had devoted it to the fearless pursuit of truth, and to generous self-sacrifice and noble devotion to others; and it was resolved, “That we prize the lesson of the noble life and death of Franklin Story Conant.”