PKESIDENTIAL ADDEESS. 35 



in 1799, one of the chief promoters being President D wight 

 [b. 1753. tl. 1S17], whose "'Travels in New England and 

 New York," printed in 1S21 , abounds with scientific observations. 



Another was E. C. Herrick [b. 181 1, d. 1862], for many 

 years librarian and subsequently treasurer of Yale College, 

 whose observations upon the aurora, made in the latter years of 

 the last century, are still frequently quoted ; and later an active 

 investigator of volcanic phenomena, and the author of a treatise 

 on the Hessian fly and its parasites, the results of nine years' 

 study ; and of another on tlie existence of a planet between 

 ISIercury and the sun. 



Benjamin Silliman [b. in Trumbull, Conn., Aug. 8, i779' ^' 

 in New Haven, Nov. 37, 1S69], who, in 1802, became Professor 

 of Chemistry at Yale, began there his career of usefulness as 

 an organizer, teacher, and critic. One of his introductions to 

 popular favor was the paper which he. in conjunction with 

 Prof. Kingsley, published, '"An account of the meteor which 

 burst over Weston, in Connecticut, in December, 1807." This 

 paper attracted attention evervwhere, for the nature of meteors 

 was not well understood in those days. Jefferson was reputed to 

 have said in reference to it, " that it was easier to believe that 

 two Yankee professors could lie than to admit that stones could 

 fall from heaven ;" but I think this must be pigeon-holed with 

 the millions of other slanders to which Jefferson was subjected 

 in those days. I find in the papers by Rittenhouse and Madison, 

 published twenty years before, by the Philosophical Society, 

 matter-of-fact allusions to the falling of meteors to the earth. 



Silliman was the earliest of American scientific lecturers who 

 appeared before popular audiences, and, as founder and editor of 

 the Journal of Science, did a service to science, the value of 

 which is beyond estimate or computation. 



Benjamin Waterhouse, Professor of tlie Theory and Practice 

 of Medicine in Harvard, 1783-1812, was one of the earliest 



