It was while studying the habits of the fresh water shells of the Mahoning and its branches that Dr. Kirtland made a discovery which attracted attention throughout the scientific world. The classification of species had been made upon mere difference of form. Dr. Kirtland perceived that in the same species a difference of form was due to sex in testacea the same as in all other animals, and that too many species had been adopted. This bold announcement, coming from the back woods of Ohio, created quite a commotion among naturalists. It was, however, found, on investigation, to be true, though it rendered obsolete a large number of terrible Latin phrases.
In the publication of his views, and afterwards for his descriptions of the fishes of Ohio, he found a liberal patron in the Boston Society of Natural History. When the State of Ohio organized a geological survey, in 1838, the department of Natural History was of course given to him. There was barely time to make a catalogue of the fauna and flora of the State before the survey was suspended, but many of his figures and descriptions of the fishes have since been published in the transactions of the Boston Society. This appointment broke up his large medical practice in Trumbull and adjacent counties. He now accepted the appointment of Professer in the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnati. About 1838, Prof. Kirtland removed from Poland to Cleveland, to perform the same duties in the Cleveland Medical College. With a restless energy he went beyond natural history and medicine in his investigations, into the field of horticulture, floriculture and agriculture.
Purchasing a rugged farm on the ridge road five miles out of Cleveland, he entered with zeal into the business of scientific farming. Here he demonstrated that a stiff clay soil derived from the underlying Devonian Shales may be made highly productive in fruit. His success stimulated others along the ridge road, until the old pastures and meadows on that side of the city have been changed into the most profitable orchards and gardens in the vicinity. This required twenty years more of time and industry, during much of which he came daily to the college and delivered one or more lectures. In the lecture his style is entirely conversational, but rapid, fluent, and always intelligible. Here all the varieties of his studies come into play, as it were, spontaneously. He is equally at home among the birds, the insects and the reptiles, the fishes or the mammalia. Their habits are as familiar as those of his children and grandchildren. He writes but seldom, and thus the teachings of so many years on so many subjects are confided principally to the memory of the many hundreds of students to whom they have been delivered.
For several years Dr. Kirtland has declined to lecture on any subject. He is verging upon four score, a period which with most men, is necessarily one of rest if not of weariness, but he has never known what it is to rest. No farmer in Rockport is up earlier or attends more closely to his grounds. All the valuable varieties of peaches, pears, cherries and grapes, have been tested by their actual product, or are in the process of being tested. He is enthusiastically fond of the culture of bees and of every variety of flowers which will thrive in this climate. A number of new varieties of cherries have been originated on the Kirtland farm, and after trial those which are valuable have been scattered over the country. There are very few men who are enabled to make so many applications of science to practical subjects, and still fewer who are permitted to live long enough to witness the fruits of their labors.
Theodatus Garlick.
We are almost at a loss in what class to place Dr. Garlick. By natural taste and genius he belongs to the artists. His devotion to the healing art arose principally from the necessities of our race for something to eat and wear. He had the fortune, probably good fortune, to be born in Vermont, at Middlebury, March 30th, 1805, in view of the Green Mountains, among rocks and mountains. This region is principally famous for marble, slate, iron ore, and hardy young men, generally known as Green Mountain boys.
An older brother, Abel B. Garlick, having been apprenticed to a marble cutter, came out West, sometime after the war of 1812, and located at Cleveland. In 1816, Theodatus, at the age of eleven years, had drifted as far as Erie, Pennsylvania; in 1819, to Cleveland. The Winter of 1819-20, he spent at Black River, which was then the leading ship yard of the lakes.
Abel B. had artist's ability also. In this region no marble was to be found, but a tolerable substitute existed in the fine grained blue sandstone at Newburg. A mill was erected at the quarry on Mill creek, below the falls, where these stones were sawed, as they are now, into handsome slabs.
Like other New Englanders, the Vermont boys are early impressed with the idea of self-support. Although Theodatus much preferred fun and frolic to hard labor, he entered cheerfully upon the business of a stone cutter at the age of sixteen. Their marble yard (without marble) was on Bank street, where Morgan & Root's block now stands. Abel marked the outlines of the letters upon incipient grave stones in pencil, and Theodatus carved them with his chisel. Most of the renowned sculptors of Ohio, such as Powell, Clevenger and Jones, took their first lessons in the same way. All of them have left samples of their untutored skill in various angels and cherubs, now mouldering in old churchyards. The blue sandstone monuments, on which Dr. Garlick cut inscriptions fifty years since, are still to be seen in the early cemeteries of the Western Reserve; some are touching enough, but not a few are more ridiculous than mournful. When Nathan Perry became so prosperous that he proposed to remove the old wooden store on the corner of Water and Superior streets and replace it with a brick one, he concluded to expend something upon ornament. He ordered two oval stone signs to be made and to be built into the walls over the two doors, one on each street. These were among the earliest efforts of Dr. Garlick. Both of these stones were in existence until the ground was cleared for the present Bank building, when they were broken up and put into the cellar wall. In those days it was one of the duties of an apprentice to sharpen the tools at a blacksmith's forge. The young man concluded to carve flying cherubims with their stone trumpets to ring in the ears of coming generations no longer.
Having a robust physical constitution, he became passionately fond of hunting and fishing. In 1822, he lived with a brother in Newbury, Geauga county, which was then a forest full of game. In a letter referring to the sporting days of his youth, he wrote as follows: