Excerpt from The American Geologist, 1904, Vol. 34: A Monthly Journal of Geology and Allied Sciences
The sense of bereavement which follows upon a loss so disastrous to paleontology as the departure of professor Beecher renders it difficult to express lucidly and in adequate measure to those who may have known him more by repute than by personal intercourse, his real value to his science or to record an appreciative tribute to his genius. Human experience is so full of instances of brilliant abilities prematurely quenched, of fruitful lives blotted out, of promising careers terminated before the goal is reached, that the aphorisms of the world take note of them. Death loves a shining mark, indeed.
Professor Beecher's end was wholly without premonition even to the penetrating eyes that watched him most closely, and its suddenness carries an element of the tragic. The Sunday morning of his death he arose as well as ever but later he complained of pains in his arms, then in his chest. The usual household remedies failing, a physician was summoned and while they talked together he complained of dizziness and with a few breaths was gone. The hardening of the cononary arteries or angina pectoris, which might least have been expected in a constitution of relative youth, is regarded as the cause of death.
One often sees in midsummer an oak on which a single leaf flares out in red and yellow while all the rest are green, and here too age has stolen on with unequal pace.
Professor Beecher was in the 48th year of a singularly productive life.
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