SKETCH OF SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL. 6 95 



in New York, in 1815 ; the reading to the society of a narrative 

 of the earthquakes of the United States and in foreign parts, 

 during 1811, 1812, and 1813; co-operation in a petition to the 

 Common Council of New York for the grant of the building in 

 the North Park for the purposes of Literature, Science, and Arts ; 

 the delivery, in connection with a curious case by which the town 

 was stirred, of a public lecture on the Somnium, or dream, as a 

 state different both from wakefulness and sleep ; an excursion 

 with friends to the region watered by the Wallkill, where the 

 party disinterred a mammoth ; participation in an excursion to 

 the Neversink Hills, near Sandy Hook, where a dangerous mis- 

 take in their altitude, which had been supposed to be six hundred 

 feet, was corrected, and the real height was found to be only half 

 as great, or three hundred feet ; acting as vice-president of the 

 District Convention which met at Philadelphia for preparing a 

 National Pharmacopoeia ; and co-operation with Samuel Wood 

 and- Garrett K. Lawrence in recommending the willow-leaved 

 meadow-sweet (Spiraea salicifolia) "as an admirable article for 

 refreshment and health, and as a substitute for the tea of China." 

 A description and classification of one hundred and sixty-six 

 species of fish, chiefly found in the fresh and salt waters adjacent 

 to the city of New York, which he offered to the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society at one of its earlier meetings, was the 

 nucleus of what is regarded as his chief work. He mentions in 

 his record more than forty additional species described in Bigelow 

 and Holly's Magazine, and several more in the Journal of the 

 Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. An elaborate History by him 

 of the Botanical Writers of America is to be found in the collec- 

 tions of the New York Historical Society. Of his literary and 

 scientific work as a whole, in fact, it is well said in the Cyclopaedia 

 of American Literature that' numerous papers by him are in- 

 cluded in the Transactions of the many learned societies of Europe 

 and America of which he was a member ; and he was often called 

 upon, at the anniversaries of the societies of his own city, to appear 

 as their orator. " His multifarious productions are consequently 

 scattered over a number of publications and collections of pam- 

 phlets, and are somewhat overshadowed by the reputation of the 

 learned bodies with which they are connected. They have fallen, 

 to some extent, into an unmerited oblivion." He had committed 

 his manuscripts to his brother-in-law, the late Dr. Samuel Akerly, 

 as the friend most competent to write his biography, and the work 

 was begun, when the papers were destroyed by the burning of the 

 house in which they were deposited. Had Dr. Akerly not been 

 thus prevented from completing this work, and had he been able 

 to present Dr. Mitchill's life and writings in substantial form, the 

 subject of our sketch would doubtless have received the credit to 



