PRESroETsTTIAL ADDEESS. 57 



tific progress of this continent. Silliman's journal succeeded, 

 and far more than replaced, the Atnerican Mineralogical Jour- 

 nal^ the earliest of American scientific periodicals, which was 

 established in New York 1810 by Dr. Archibald Bruce, and 

 which was discontinued after the close of the first volume, in 

 1S14, on account of the illness and untimely death of its pro- 

 jector.* Tlie Mineralogical Jojwnal was not so limited in 

 scope as in name, and was for a time the principal organ of 

 our scientific specialists. f 



We can but admire the spirit of Silliman, who remarks in the 

 preface to the third volume : 



" It must require several years from the commencement of the 

 work to decide the question [whether it is to be supported], and 

 the editor (if God continues his life and healtli) will endeavour 

 to prove himself neither impatient nor querulous during the time 

 that his countrymen hold the question undecided, xvhether there 

 shall be a7i Atnerican Journal of Scietice and Arts." 



In the fall of 1822 he announced that a trial of four years had 

 decided the point that the American public would support this 

 journal. 



Prior to the establishing of Silliman's journal, the principal 

 organs of American science were the Medical Repository, 

 commenced in 179S, of which Dr. Mitchill was the chief 

 proprietor ; the JVexv York Aledical and Physical Journal, 

 conducted chiefly by Dr. Hosack ; the Boston Journal of Phi- 

 losophy and the Arts, and other similar periodicals. Our 

 students looked chiefly, however, to the English journals — 

 Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine and Nicholson's Journal of 

 Natural Philosophy, and later, Thomson's Annals of Phil- 

 osophy, the Annates de Chimie. 



*"No future historian of American science will fail to commemorate 

 this work, us our earliest purely scientific journal, supported bv original 

 American communications'' said Silliman in his prospectus, 1817. 



xThe only copies of this journal known to he in existence are in the N. 

 Y. State Library and the Harvard Library. 



