16 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



that American zoology took its rise, and was fostered chiefly, 

 in Philadelphia, by the professors in the medical schools. 



It was fully demonstrated, I think, in my former address, that 

 there were good zoologists in America long before there were 

 medical schools, and that Philadelphia was not the cradle of 

 American natural history ; although, during its period of polit 

 ical pre-eminence, immediately after the Revolution, scientific 

 activities of all kinds centred in that city. As for the medical 

 schools it is at least probable that they have spoiled more nat 

 uralists than they have fostered. 



Dr. Adam Kuhn [b. 1741, d. 1817] was the professor of 

 botany in 1768* the first in America and was labeled by his 

 contemporaries "the favorite pupil of Linnaeus." Professor 

 Gray, in a recent letter to the writer, refers to this saying as a 

 "myth;" and it surely seems strange that a disciple be 

 loved by the great Swede could have done so little for botany. 

 Barton, in a letter, in 1792, to Thunberg, who then occupied 

 the seat of Linnaeus in the University of Upsala, said : 



" The electricity of your immortal Linne has hardly been felt 

 in this Ultima Thule of science. Had a number of the pupils of 

 that great man settled in North America its riches would have 

 been better known. But, alas ! the only one pupil of your prede 

 cessor that has made choice of America as the place of his resi 

 dence has added nothing to the stock of natural knowledge."! 



The Rev. Nicholas Collin, Rector of the Swedish Churches 

 in Pennsylvania, was a fellow-countryman and acquaintance of 

 Linnaeus J and an accomplished botanist, having been one of the 

 editors of Muhlenberg's work upon the grasses and an early 

 writer on American linguistics. He read before the Philo 

 sophical Society, in 1789, "An Essay on those inquiries in 



* See p. 99, ante. 



fB. S. BARTON, in Transactions American Philosophical Society, iii, 



P- 339- 



J " I often heard the great Linnaeus wish that he could have explored 

 the continent of North America." COLLIN: Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., iii, 

 p. xv. 



