24 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHHSTGTOlSr. 



was, perhaps, Benjamin Smith Barton [b. 1766, d. 1815.] 

 Barton was the nephew of Rittenhouse, and the son of the Rev. 

 Thomas Barton, a learned Episcopal Clergyman of Lancaster, 

 who was one of the earliest members of the Philosophical Society, 

 and a man accomplished in science. 



He studied at Edinburgh and Gottingen, and at the age of 19, 

 in 178^, he was the assistant of Rittenhouse and Ellicott, in 

 the work of establishing the western boundary of Pennsylvania, 

 and soon after was sent to Europe, whence, having pursued an 

 extended course of scientific and medical study, he returned in 

 17S9, and was elected professor of natural history and botany in 

 the University of Pennsylvania. He was a leader in the Philo- 

 sophical Society, and the founder of the Linnaean Society of 

 Philadelphia, before which, in 1S07, he delivered his famous 

 *•' Discourse on some of the Principal Desiderata in Natural His- 

 tory, " which did much to excite an intelligent popular interest 

 in the subject. His essays upon natural history topics were the 

 first of the kind to appear in this country. He belonged to the 

 school of Gilbert White and Benjamin Stillingfleet, and was 

 the first in America of a most useful and interesting group of 

 writers, among whom may be mentioned John D. Godman, 

 Samuel Lock wood, C. C. Abbott, Nicholas Pike, John Bur- 

 roughs, Wilson Flagg, Ernest Ingersoll. the Rev. Dr. McCook, 

 Hamilton Gibson, Maurice Thompson, and W. T. Hornaday, as 

 well as Matthew Jones, Campbell Hardy, Charles Waterton, 

 P. H. Gosse, and Grant Allen, to whom America and England 

 both have claims. 



Barton published certain descriptive papers, as well as manuals 

 of botany and materia medica, but in latter life had become so 

 absorbed in medical affairs that he appears to have taken no 

 interest in the struggles of the infant Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 which was founded three years before his death, but of which he 

 never became a member. 



