16 



of any other scientist of that period to call attention to the study 

 of natural phenomena. 



Such, briefly, was the scientific outlook in Europe at the close 

 of the first decade of the nineteenth century. What was the con- 

 dition of science at that time in the New World? Meagre indeed. 

 Franklin, that " mighty genius," as Mirabeau styled him, had 

 been resting in his grave full twenty-two years when our Academy 

 was born, and science in Philadelphia I may say in America 

 lay sleeping with him. From the time that he had experimentally 

 identified lightning with the electric fluid no great scientific dis- 

 covery had been made in the United States. The American 

 Philosophical Society, which he was instrumental in creating, 

 had been in existence forty-three years, and had published in all 

 that time but six volumes of its Transactions. The College of 

 Physicians, founded in 1787, had issued, in 1793, the first and, up 

 to 1812, the only volume of its publications. In addition to these 

 institutions, two medical societies of but little importance, one 

 botanical association known as the Linnsean Societ}^, the Philadel- 

 phia, Loganian, and Friends' Libraries, with two small circulating 

 libraries, were the only available aids to the literary and scientific 

 student. Strictly scientific works were scarce, and scientific men 

 but few in number. Between 1739 and 1803, James Logan, Dr. 

 John Claj^ton, John and William Bartram, and Dr. Benjamin S. 

 Barton had published various more or less valuable works on 

 botany. The celebrated David Rittenhouse, whom Renwick, his 

 biographer, pronounced as " second to Franklin alone in point of 

 scientific merit, and the equal, in point of learning and skill, as an 

 observer, to any practical astronomer then living," had, some years 

 prior to his death, in 1796, contributed many valuable papers on 

 astronomical, philosophical, and mathematical subjects to the 

 early volumes of the Transactions of the American Philosophical 

 Society. In a later volume of these Transactions, Mr. Maclure, 

 who has been called the pioneer of American geology, published 

 an account of a geological survey of the United States made by 

 himself in 1809. In ornithology a new era may justly be said to 

 have been established in 180S b} r the publication of the first 

 volume of Alexander Wilson's magnificent work on American 

 birds, the fifth and sixth volumes of which appeared in 1812. 



The mass of the people of Philadelphia were then, as they are 

 now, but little interested in purely scientific studies. The few 



