SKETCH OF CHARLES UPHAM SHEPAEI). 549 



of a brave struggle with the poverty which had kept them from 

 their goal." After a description of the village and the mode of 

 life in it, Prof. Shepard continues : " With such surroundings, 

 what now were our interior advantages ? Whatever we may- 

 have represented them to outsiders, whatever we may have per- 

 suaded ourselves concerning them, they were, in my day, ex- 

 tremely meager. The teachers were few, and in general were 

 not distinguished in their departments. Our library did not 

 surpass the scholarly range of a country clergyman in fair cir- 

 cumstances. Apparatus and collections were unknown in our 

 first year, and they had made but feeble beginnings before our 

 graduation. The only lectures which I remember were the two 

 annual courses of Prof. Amos Eaton, in his day a distinguished 

 botanist and geologist. 



"In Dr. Moore, a gentleman of suave manners, of true Chris- 

 tain dignity, and of singular judgment in managing youth, we had 

 an admirable president. I venture to suspect that he was the 

 only college president in the United States who, from the begin- 

 ning, personally subscribed for the somewhat expensive numbers 

 of the Journal of the Royal Institution of London. From this 

 source, and others similar, he appears to have gained a prevision 

 of the importance of the modern sciences in education, and to 

 him mainly are we indebted for the early foothold which they 

 gained in the institution; to him, at all events, we owed the 

 presence of Prof. Eaton. Rarely has college lecturer been more 

 faithfully and enthusiastically listened to than Prof. Eaton in 

 his courses on chemistry and botany, together with his abridged 

 course on zoology. To supply the place of a text-book on the last- 

 mentioned branch, he furnished us a highly useful printed 

 syllabus, drawn mainly from the great work of Cuvier, then 

 wholly inaccessible to us. . . . There were doubtless deficiencies 

 to be regretted. In the larger and older universities we might 

 have found better teachers and richer stores of libraries and 

 collections, but in some unknown way, perhaps in the enthusiasm 

 of comparatively solitary effort, compensation was made ; and on 

 the whole we may doubt whether higher life success would have 

 attended us had we launched from other ports." 



For a year after graduation he studied botany and mineralogy 

 with Thomas Nuttall at Cambridge, and during most of this time 

 taught the same branches in Boston. His study of mineralogy 

 led to the preparation of papers on that subject which he sent to 

 the American Journal of Science, and in this manner he became 

 acquainted with its editor, the elder Silliman. He was invited in 

 1827 to become Prof. Silliman's assistant, and continued as such 

 till 1831. For a year of this time he was Curator of Franklin 

 Hall, an institution that was established by James Brewster in 



