PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 101 



New York, 1769, d. 1835] was the incumbent. Dr. Hosack 

 brought with him from Europe in 1790 the first cabinet of min 

 erals ever seen in the United States. In its arrangement he was 

 assisted by one of his pupils, Archibald Bruce, who became, in 

 1806, Professor of Mineralogy, and who, soon after, in 1810, 

 established the American Journal of Mineralogy. 



Dr. Hosack was the founder of the first public botanic garden 

 this was in New York in 1801 ; another was founded in Charles 

 ton in 1804. These had disappeared forty years ago, and the one 

 at Cambridge, established in 1808, is the only one now in exist 

 ence. 



The first public museum was that founded in Philadelphia, in 

 1785, by Charles Wilson Peale ; the bones of a mammoth and a 

 stuffed paddle-fish forming its nucleus. This establishment had 

 a useful career of nearly fifty years. 



VII. 



We have now rehearsed the story of the earliest investigators 

 of American natural history, including two centuries of English 

 endeavor, and nearly three if we take into consideration the 

 earlier explorations of the naturalists of continental Europe. 



We have seen how, in the course of many generations, the intel 

 lectual supremacy of the Western Continent went from the Span 

 iards and the French and the Dutch to the new people who were 

 to be called Americans, and we have become acquainted with the 

 men who were most thoroughly identified with the scientific en 

 deavors of each successive period of activity. 



The achievements of American science during the century 

 which has elapsed since the time when Franklin, Jefferson, Rit- 

 tenhouse, and Rumford were its chief exponents have been often 

 the subject of presidential addresses like this, and the record is 

 a proud one. During the last fifty years in England, and the 

 last forty in America, discovery has followed discovery with 

 such rapid succession that it is somewhat hard to realize that 



