694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inquiries. Curious speculations and remarks appear in his letters 

 about phenomena which came under his observation. In one let- 

 ter, Dr. Mitchill wishes his wife to inform him exactly at what 

 hour a certain storm began. " I wish to know/' he said, " exactly 

 when the storm began in New York, as it is connected with other 

 facts tending to a theory of the atmospheric motions in winter." 

 Another letter, forwarding a specimen of the Mitchella repens, 

 explains why no plant had been named after him. Prof. Will- 

 denow, of Berlin, had intended to give his name to some plant, 

 but found it already appropriated by this partridge-berry, which 

 was named by Linnaeus in honor of John Mitchell, of Virginia. 

 He was more fortunate, according to Dr. Francis, in the matter 

 of fish. " He was the delight," says this biographer, " of a meet- 

 ing of naturalists. The seed he sowed gave origin and growth to 

 a mighty crop of those disciples of natural science. He was em- 

 phatically our great living ichthyologist. The fishermen and 

 fish-mongers were perpetually bringing him new specimens. They 

 adopted his name for our excellent fish, the striped bass, and 

 designated it the Perca Mitchilli." 



He writes concerning a conversation he had with Captain 

 Lewis, the explorer, about the burning plains up the Missouri, 

 where the burning strata of coal underlying the plains produced 

 such intense heat as to form lava, slag, and pumice-stone by the 

 same process that forms those volcanic substances in the burning 

 mountains of other countries. December 30, 1807, he congratu- 

 lates his wife on the account in one of her letters of the meteoric 

 stones that fell to the earth in Connecticut, which arrived at a 

 most convenient time, having preceded all the letters to the Con- 

 necticut delegation, and even outrun the newspapers. Dr. Mitchill 

 also during this period visited Upper Canada, and described the 

 mineralogy of Niagara Falls ; wrote a history of West Point and 

 the Military Academy ; and visited Harper's Ferry and described 

 the geology and scenery of that spot, which had been eulogized 

 for its sublimity by Jefferson' in his Notes on Virginia. Dr. 

 Mitchill retired from his professorship in Columbia College on his 

 election to Congress, in 1801. In 1807, when the College of Phy- 

 sicians and Surgeons of the City of New York was organized, he 

 was chosen its first Professor of Chemistry, but declined the posi- 

 tion, preferring his public duties. In 1808, however, he accepted a 

 professorship of Natural History ; and in 1820, on the reorgani- 

 zation of the faculty, became Professor of Botany and Materia 

 Medica. Difficulties occurred with the Board of Trustees in 1828, 

 and the whole faculty of the college resigned. Among other 

 works for the advancement of science and learning mentioned in 

 his record are his action with Drs. Hosack and Hugh Williamson 

 in laying the foundation of a Literary and Philosophical Society 



