PENSYLVANIA 85 



tice has a select stock of drugs and keeps a few young 

 men at hand to prepare prescriptions and assist in visit- 

 ing patients. By private reading or academical in- 

 struction, these young men contrive to increase their 

 knowledge and so fit themselves for practice on their 

 own account. 



I must mention here two worthy men of whom Phila- 

 delphia boasts. 



The name of Mr. Rittenhouse is known throughout 

 America, as it deserves to be. He is perhaps 50 years 

 of age, of modest and agreeable manners, open and 

 engaging. His parents or grandparents came from 

 Germany to Pensylvania ; he himself was apprenticed 

 as a watch-maker, but without the least assistance he 

 has made himself a complete astronomer, by his own 

 brains and industry. In the Orrery already mentioned 

 as at the College in Philadelphia he has given a gen- 

 erally admired proof of his mechanical talents. An- 

 other work of this sort prepared by him is at Princeton. 

 He has sketched a new plan for a third, a much im- 

 proved and simpler apparatus, but he himself does not 

 know whether he can ever bring it to completion. 

 They have made him a Collector of the Revenue and so 

 have quite snatched him from the paths of science. 



Mr. du Sumitiere* of Geneva, a painter, is almost 



drugs at Philadelphia among others a German shop where 

 the ' Pensylvania-Dutch ' farmer, to his great comfort, is sup- 

 plied all the silly doses he has been accustomed to in the 

 fatherland. 



* He has since died, and his collections are broken up. The 

 Assembly of Pensylvania threw out the bill for purchasing 

 them for the University, although the sum necessary would 

 have been very moderate. 



