PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 17 



Natural Philosophy which at present are most beneficial to the 

 Uni'od States of North America." which was the first attempt 

 to lay out a systematic plan for the direction of scientific re- 

 search in America. One of the most interesting suggestions he 

 made was that the Mammoth was still in existence. 



•' Tiie vast Mahmot," said he, " is perhaps yet stalking through 

 the western Vv^ilderness ; but if he is no more let us carefully 

 gather his remains, and even try to find a new skeleton of this 

 giant, to whom the elephant was but a calf." * 



Gen. Jonathan Williams, U. S. A. [b. 1750, d. 1S15], was first 

 superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point and 

 " father of the corps of engineers." He was a nephew of 

 Franklin, and his secretary of legation in France, and, after 

 his return to Philadelphia, was for many years a judge of the 

 court of common pleas, his military career not beginning till 

 1 801. This versatile man was a leading member of the Phil- 

 osophical Society and one of its Vice-Presidents. His paper 

 '• On the Use of the Thermometer in Navigation" was one of the 

 first American contributions to scientific seamanship. 



The Rev. Dr. John Ewing [b. 1732, d. 1802], also a Vice- 

 President, was Provost of the University. He had been one of 

 the observers of the transit in 1769, of which he published an 

 account in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society. He 

 early printed a volume of lectures on Natural Philosophy, and 

 was the strongest champion of John Godfrey, the Philadelphian, 

 in his claim to the invention of the reflecting quadrant. f 



* Id., p. xxiv. 



t" Thomas Godfrey," says a recent authority, "was born in Bristol. 

 Pcnn., in 1704, and died in Philadelphia in December, 1749. He followed 

 the trade of a glazier in the metropolis, and, having a fondness for mathe- 

 matical studies, marked such books as he met with, subsequently acquir- 

 ing Latin, that he might become familiar with the mathematical work in 

 that language. Having obtained a copy of Newton's ' Principia,' he de- 

 scribed an improvement he had made in Davis' quadrant to James Logan, 



