THE INCORPORATORS 193 
member of the first Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution and favored the plan of Joseph Henry for the organiza- 
tion of that establishment. 
General Totten was deeply interested in many branches of 
natural history, and particularly in mineralogy and conchology. 
While Fort Adams was under construction, he spent his spare 
hours in collecting shells in the vicinity of Newport and also 
about Provincetown, Massachusetts. He published descriptions 
of several new species, and a list of the shells of Massachusetts, 
and furnished much important information for Gould’s “ Inver- 
tebrata of Massachusetts.” He presented his collection of rare 
shells to the Smithsonian Institution. 
(From J. G. BarNnarp, in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of 
Sciences, vol. 1, 1877, pp. 35-97-) 
JOSIAH DWIGHT WHITNEY 
Born, November 23, 1819; died, August 19, 1896 
Josiah Dwight Whitney, the oldest of a family of thirteen chil- 
dren, was of English ancestry. Both the Dwight and Whitney 
families were descended from early New England settlers, who 
counted in their numbers graduates of Yale and Harvard, college 
presidents, able business men, missionaries, soldiers, and mem- 
bers of all the professions. Whitney was born at Northampton, 
Massachusetts, November 23, 1819, and at eight years of age left 
the district school in his native village and went to Plainfield, 
where according to the custom of the day, Rev. Moses Hallock 
took boys into his family for instruction. After further school- 
ing at Round Hill, Northampton, New Haven, and Andover, he 
entered Yale College as a sophomore in 1836. Returning to 
New Haven after graduation, young Whitney entered his 
father’s bank, and for a time enjoyed the delights of a cultured 
home, where music played a prominent part. Art, science, music, 
law, and business attracted him by turn, but finally in 1839 he 
yielded to his love for chemistry and entered the University of 
Pennsylvania to study under Dr. Robert Hare. The following 
year he made the acquaintance of Dr. Charles T. Jackson, and 
