Address by Professor Baldwin. xxi 



His horizon was not so broad as that of his predecessor in these 

 offices, nor his executive powers of equal energy. 



Another circumstance also now occurred to weaken the position 

 of the Academy as an active force in the cultivation of the Arts 

 and Sciences. In 1818, Professor Silliman undertook the arduous 

 task of editing and publishing a scientific periodical of a general 

 character, and in July of that year, the first number of the 

 " American Journal of Science and Arts " appeared from the 

 New Haven press. He had made important contributions to the 

 first volume of the Academy's Memoirs, and had always been one 

 of its leading spirits. Such, indeed, he continued to be for many 

 years, but his main interest henceforth as to scientific publications 

 was naturally centered in the Journal, for whose regular issue he 

 had become responsible, and which was soon called, in common 

 parlance, by his name. To support his undertaking, a vote had 

 been passed in February, " that the Committee of Publication 

 may allow such of the Academy's papers as they think proper, to 

 be published in Mr. Silliman's Scientific Journal." 



Free use was made of this authority, and a large part of the 

 contents of the Journal was for many years drawn from this 

 source. In some cases this fact was noted in publication ; but in 

 most it was not. Among the more important communications to 

 the Academy which were thus transferred to the Journal of 

 Science may be mentioned a series of articles, some by Edward C. 

 Herrick, and others by Professors Olmstead and Loomis, stating 

 the observations and conclusions which did so much to call general 

 attention to the periodicity of meteoric showers and to confirm 

 what is now the universally accepted theory of their cause. 



In 1826, when the Journal was in great need of financial sup- 

 port, the Academy further voted to pay for a year the cost of 

 printing such of its papers as might be published in it. In Bald- 

 win's Annals of Yale College,* published in 1831, it is described 

 as a publication " honorable to the science of our common coun- 

 try," and having " an additional value as being adopted as the 

 acknowledged organ of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences." 



The Christian Spectator, also, another New Haven magazine, 

 which was founded in 1819, drew heavily from the productive 



* P. 207. 



