98 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



logwood, opium, scammony, burilla, aloes, sarsaparilla, cinna- 

 mon, myrtle wax, the production of saltpetre, cobalt, cochineal, the 

 manufacture of wine, raisins, and olive oil, the collection of gum 

 from the persimmon tree, and the acclimation of silk grass. A 

 medal was given in 1761 to Dr. Jared Eliot, of Connecticut, for the 

 extraction of iron from l * black sand."* In 1 757 we nn d their sec- 

 retary endeavoring to establish branch societies in the colonial 

 cities, especially in Charleston, Philadelphia and New York, and 

 Garden seems to have tried to carry out the enterprise in Charles- 

 ton. After two years he wrote that the society organized had 

 become " a mere society of drawing, painting, and sculpture." 



In a subsequent letter he utters a pitiful plaint. He has often 

 wondered, he says, " that there should be a country abounding 

 with almost every sort of plant, and almost every species of the 

 animal kind, and yet that it should not have pleased God to raise 

 up one botanist."t 



The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded by 

 the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1780 and its first volume of 

 memoirs appeared in 1785* 



In 1788 an effort was made by the Chevalier Quesnay de Beau- 

 repaire to found in Richmond, Virginia, the " Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences of the United States of America " upon the model 

 of the French Academy. The plan was submitted to the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences in Paris, and received its unqualified en- 

 dorsement, signed, among others, by Lavoisier. A large sub- 

 scription was made by the Virginians and a large building erected, 

 but an academy of sciences needs members as well as a president, 

 and the enterprise was soon abandoned.! 



In 1799 was organized the Connecticut Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences, which, after publishing one volume of Transactions, 



* See Dossie : Memoirs of Agriculture. London, vol. i, 1768, pp. 24-6, 

 et seq., also Brock in Richmond Standard, April 26, 1879, P- 4- 



t Smith: op. ciL, i, p. 477. 



X See Mordecai : Richmond in By-gone Days. A copy of the original 

 pamphlet of proposals is still preserved in the Virginia State Library. 



