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Show FAMOUS ITUHSf DIES OFffUfffilA John Muir, Associate of Burroughs, Succumbs After Aft-er Brief Illness. LOS ANGELES, Oal., Dec. 21. John Muir, the naturalist, died in a hospital here today of pneumonia. He -was 76 3'ears of age. Air. Muir was visiting his daughter, Mrs. Helen Muir Punk, at Daggett, a town in the desert in San Bernardino county. Ho was stricken with pneumonia pneu-monia last week. Doctors from Los Angeles wcro called in consultation Tuesday and it was determined to bring him to this city for treatment. When he arrived here last night, Mr. Muir was in a critical condition, lie sank rapidly, death coming 8t 10 o'clock this morning. .His daughter was with him. John Muir, like John Burroughs, with whom his name often has been linked, belonged to that tradition of British naturalists whose work was so fused with the writer's personality and so penetrated by individual feeling that their output was as much literature as science. Philosopher nnd artist, as well as observer, ob-server, he took a creative delight "in his work, which no mere classification of details could have brought. Born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, Muir came to this country at the age of 11, and after graduating from the University of Wisconsin with the class of 18C4, plunged immediately into his life work of geologist, explorer and naturalist. nat-uralist. His descriptions of the Yosemite valley val-ley first brought it into national fame, and his visit there left him with a love of the west which remained through all his travels and led him to make his homo at Martinez, Cal., in his later years. He chose a site in the Contra Costa valley, sheltered on one side by a wooded hill aud surrounded on three others by vineyards, orchards and streams, confronted bv the towering outline of Mount Diablo. The grounds were a riot of pines, palms, cacti anil exotic, vegetation, for botany was one of Muir's delights. To the great glacier Muir discovered in Alaska in 1S61 his name was given, and as a member of the de Long relief expedition he made further valuable polar reports. Enter, his traveis. partlv in company with John Burroughs, took him to Hawaii, Ha-waii, Russia, Siberia. Manchuria, India In-dia and Australasia, but bis life work was in the mountains of western America, Amer-ica, where he made an elaborate classification classi-fication of fannal and floral life, supplemented sup-plemented by much descriptive writing, both in book form and in the periodical press and the newspapers. Harvard, Yale, Wisconsin, and other universities granted him honorary degrees, de-grees, and he was elected to membership member-ship in many scientific societies. Of recent years his signature was rarelv seen, but he had remained sturdy and active until his sudden seizure by pneumonia. pneu-monia. Muir, as a boy, was given to inventions, inven-tions, and but for the severity of his father, mtpjit have rivaled Kison. AnionK his earliest achievements, as recounted by himself, was an alarm clock device which threw him out of bed in the morning. morn-ing. This saved him the trouble of making mak-ing up his mind to get up in a cold room, but he Improved upon It bv another alarm clock which started the kitchen fire at any desired time, and pave young Muir more time In bed. Both devices and many others which he contrived on the farm were frowned upon bv his father on relitrlous grounds, and Muir's Inventive bent fared ill. |
