698 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



captivating by his endeavors to improve the nomenclature of the 

 French savants, and to render the science subservient to the use- 

 ful purposes of agriculture, art, and hygiene. In treating of the 

 materia medica he delighted to dwell on the riches of our native 

 products for the art of healing, and he sustained an enormous cor- 

 respondence throughout the land, in order to add to his own prac- 

 tical observations the experience of the competent, the better to 

 prefer the claims of our indigenous products. 



Many of Dr. Mitchill's scientific papers were published in the 

 London Philosophical Magazine, New York Medical Repository, 

 American Medical and Philosophical Register, New York Medi- 

 cal and Physical Journal, American Mineralogical Journal, and 

 Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; and 

 he supplied several other periodicals, both abroad and at home, 

 with the results of his cogitations. 



Dr. Mitchill was the author of a few verses, and of prose 

 essays or addresses of an order of humorous trifling, much affect- 

 ed at the time, of which the lighter works of Irving and Pauld- 

 ing furnish the most conspicuous examples, and with which 

 Halleck's verses are in sympathy. One of his favorite topics was 

 a proposition to give a new name Fredon, or Fredonia to the 

 United States, after which the people should be called Fredes or 

 Fredonians, and their relations Fredish or Fredonian. The sub- 

 ject was taken up and discussed in the New York Historical 

 Society, but has long since been forgotten. 



His social and domestic character, according to the writer in 

 Harper's Magazine, was unusually amiable and attractive, and 

 marked by many amusing peculiarities. He had great fondness 

 for young people, and a rare power of inspiring them with the 

 love of knowledge. His home was pleasant and unpretending, 

 "and the numerous celebrities who used to resort to his salon 

 were entertained with cordial but simple hospitality." His house 

 was a perfect museum of curiosities, and Mrs. Mitchill used to be 

 troubled by the disorder they occasioned. As pertinent to this 

 nuisance, the story of the ant-eater's skin was told. . At first the 

 skin was an object of great interest. Then it became dingy and 

 dusty, and was remanded to the garret. In two or three years 

 more it became old and moth-eaten, and Mrs. Mitchill and the 

 servant, not wishing to worry the doctor, had it secretly carried 

 off and thrown into the street. Dr. Mitchill, taking his regular 

 walk the next morning, came upon a group of boys curiously 

 looking at some unusual object, which proved to be the ant-eater's 

 skin. He joined them, and, after giving them a full scientific 

 lecture on the a"nt-eater, said he had a skin like this one at home 

 and would bo glad to have another and bought it from them for 

 fifty cents. No further attempts were made to get rid of it. 



