816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



means of communication between the more intelligent people of the 

 State upon all subjects embraced in its title. Chancellor Robert R. 

 Livingston was the president of this society from its formation till the 

 time of his death, in 1813 ; and the first volume of the Transactions 

 (1791 to 1799) contains no less than eighteen communications from his 

 pen upon various subjects. 



The Annual Address for 1813 was delivered before the Society for 

 the Promotion of Useful Arts, at the Capitol, in Albany, by Dr. Theod- 

 oric Romeyn Beck. In the preface to this address he stated that his 

 aim in composing the address had been a special one. " It was to ex- 

 hibit at one view the mineral riches of the United States, with their 

 various application to the arts, and to demonstrate the practicability 

 of the increase of different manufactures, whose materials are derived 

 from this source." 



The most notable and important movement in the progress of scien- 

 tific study began about 1817, when Professor Amos Eaton, after hav- 

 ing prepared himself at Yale College with the best means and instruc- 

 tion then afforded, began his courses of scientific lectures at Williams 

 College, which he afterward extended to the larger towns of New 

 England and New York. In 1818, at the invitation of Governor De 

 Witt Clinton, who was ever a most enlightened and liberal advocate 

 of scientific progress, Professor Eaton gave a course of lectures before 

 the New York Legislature, some of whose members had already been 

 his pupils. At this time much interest was awakened in the subjects 

 of geology and other departments of natural history throughout the 

 State. Professor Eaton's lectures in Troy led to the organization of 

 the Troy Lyceum of Natural History, which at that time could boast 

 of possessing a more extensive collection of geological specimens than 

 could be found in any other institution within the State of New York. 

 In 1820 and 1821 Professor Eaton, with the assistance of Drs. T. Ro- 

 meyn and Lewis C. Beck, under the patronage of Hon. Stephen Van 

 Rensselaer, carried out an agricultural and geological survey of Rens- 

 selaer and Albany Counties. These surveys, reports of which were 

 published, were intended to be made subservient to the interests of 

 agriculture, and were spoken of in the " American Journal of Science " 

 as being the most extensive and systematic efforts of the kind made 

 up to that period. In 1822, under the patronage of Hon. Stephen Van 

 Rensselaer, Mr. Eaton undertook a geological and agricultural survey 

 of the district adjoining the Erie Canal. The report upon this work 

 was published in 1824, in a volume of one hundred and sixty-three 

 pages, with a geological profile extending from the Atlantic to Lake 

 Erie, and a " profile of rocks crossing part of Massachusetts " (from 

 Boston Harbor to Plainfield), by Rev. Edward Hitchcock, who also fur- 

 nished a description of the rocks and minerals crossed by this profile. 

 In 1824 General Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School in 

 Troy, and its graduates became efficient aids in the dissemination of 



