692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Getting back to Philadelphia early in the spring of 1820, he 

 immediately set about arranging his Arkansas collections and 

 preparing his Journey into the Interior of Arkansas in 1818 and 

 1819, which he published in the following year. In the course of 

 the years 1820 to 1822 he contributed several memoirs to the 

 Journal of the Academy of Natural Science, among them being 

 one On the Serpentine Rocks of Hoboken and the Minerals which 

 they Contain, for he was giving some attention to mineralogy at 

 this time. He also lectured on botany to classes of young men. 

 His lecturing was not remarkable for eloquence, but he always 

 communicated to his pupils something of his own passion for his 

 favorite science. 



At the end of 1822 Mr. Nuttall was called to Harvard College. 

 The fund of the college for a professorship of natural history not 

 being sufficient to support a professor, he was appointed merely 

 Curator of the Botanic Garden, and but light duties of instruction 

 were assigned to him. In consequence the greater part of his 

 time was devoted to the culture of rare plants and to his own 

 studies, in which mineralogy and ornithology were included. In 

 Cambridge, as in Philadelphia, he led a retired life. 



In editing the Letters of Asa Gray Mrs. Gray remarks : " The 

 garden was laid out by Dr. Peck in 1808, and the house built for 

 him was finished in 1810. Mr. Nuttall, the botanist and orni- 

 thologist, who boarded in it while giving instruction in botany, 

 left some curious traces behind him. He was very shy of inter- 

 course with his fellows, and having for his study the southeast 

 room, and the one above for his bedroom, put in a trapdoor in the 

 floor of an upper connecting closet, and so by a ladder could pass 

 between his rooms without the chance of being met in the pas- 

 sage or on the stairs. A flap hinged and buttoned in the door 

 between the lower closet and the kitchen allowed his meals to be 

 set in on a tray without the chance of his being seen. A window 

 he cut down into an outer door, and with a small gate in the 

 board fence surrounding the garden, of which he alone had the 

 key, he could pass in and out safe from encountering any human 

 being." 



Aware that he was doing little for science, Mr. Nuttall became 

 dissatisfied with his position at Cambridge ; he used to say that 

 he was only vegetating, like his own plants. Congenial occupa- 

 tion was furnished him for a time by the suggestion of Mr. James 

 Brown, who was probably his only intimate friend in Cambridge, 

 that he write a book on ornithology. He had given more or less 

 attention to this science during almost the whole of his residence 

 in America, and readily adopted the suggestion. He set to work 

 with great zeal, and in 1832 produced his Manual of the Orni- 

 thology of the United States and Canada. It was published in 



