FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET. 159 



ticular making of certain farms that were allotted to the use 

 of the school, experiment stations. And there, gentlemen, I 

 think, in the neighborhood of Troy, in the establishment of 

 the Rensselaer School, were the first agricultural experiment 

 stations. But, unfortunately, the farmers complained that 

 the experiments were too expensive and after a few years 

 it was prohibited. However, the principal of this school 

 himself inherited a love for science in every one of its de- 

 partments, having given scientific lectures over the country 

 of New England and some parts of New York, and had in- 

 fused into men of ordinary pursuits a love, and a re- 

 spect for science which has hardly ever been equally true of 

 any other people or country. A very excellent friend of 

 mine, a lawyer, who died a few years ago at the age of 

 seventy-eight, listened to a course of lectures by Professor 

 Eaton when he was a boy in Hudson and through the influ- 

 ence of that love for science there engendered, and havinor 

 been a State officer, and in various public positions, always 

 gave his countenance and help to scientific pursuits. 



This school, established as a school for the teachins: of 

 agriculture and the mechanical arts, became a school for the 

 teaching of botany, mineralogy, chemistry and geology un- 

 der the auspices of this patron of science. A geological 

 and agricultural survey of Rensselaer County was made, as 

 also of Albany County, and the results were published 

 about 1823 or 1824. Immediately upon the opening of the 

 Erie Canal, a survey of the entire length of the canal was 

 made by this Professor Eaton and his students, under the 

 patronage of Stephen Van Rensselaer, bringing out the re- 

 sults as far as it was then practical in the way of geology 

 and agricultural botany, and other facts in science, in a vol- 

 ume published in 1824. Now, that was my knowledge of 

 the beginning of scientific work in this country, as I had de- 

 rived it mainly from nevvspaper reading in my boyhood. 



I ought to have said that, failing in every way to be 

 taught the elements of any one of the sciences, I made my 

 way to Cambridge and found there were courses of lectures 



