38G ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



impressed the young naturalist can be partly inferred from the keen 

 recollection of her tuition in Professor Whitfield's mind seventy years 

 afterwards. It is indeed interesting to note that among other objects of 

 nature which his young instructor brought to the attention of the future 

 paleontologist were the fossil inclosures of the Clinton and Hudson River 

 slates. 



When Whitfield was alwut seven years of age, in the fall of 1835, the 

 family moved to England. Here again the instincts of the naturalist 

 were nourished by the charm and flowering beauty of English lanes and 

 fields. Employed at a place four miles distant from his home, his daily 

 morning and evening walk brought him, at that impressionable age, at 

 the two loveliest periods of the day, into new relations with plants, birds 

 and insects. I have often heard him recall these quiet walks so full of 

 pleasure, the hastening footsteps to work in the morning and the linger- 

 ing and delayed return at night. Whitfield, at that tender age, was 

 wont to hunt for fossils in a clay bank near his home, where clay for 

 luting retorts was quarried. 



The Whitfields returned to America in November of 1841. They went 

 first to Paterson, X. J., thence to central Xew York to Whitestown, ad- 

 joining Utica. It may again be recalled that the efforts of the young 

 Whitfield to make collections and to study animal life were discouraged, 

 sometimes with an unkind violence. The collecting instincts of a natu- 

 ralist defy repression, and many collections, almost surreptitiously gath- 

 ered, were preserved in odd bottles and jars in white whiskey, while 

 insects in boxes, impaled on the domestic pin, gave comfort, in stolen 

 moments, to the eager young observer. These collections often met with 

 violent eviction, while from their perishable nature they were more fre- 

 quently abandoned from necessity. The family later moved to a farm 

 at Osceola, Lewis Co., iSTew York, and the young man became engaged 

 with a Mr. Chubbock in the making of philosophical instruments at 

 Utica. The business of spindle-making was broken up by new inven- 

 tions, and it was found necessary to abandon it. 



Young AVhitfield was employed nine years in his new vocation, in the 

 manufacture of philosophical instruments, and his leisure time was 

 devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. He enjo5^ed, in comparison 

 with most men who attain eminence in science, but slender educational 

 opportunities. His reading had been, in England, limited to the mis- 

 cellaneous contents of a Sunday School library at Stockport, in which 

 also pedagogical instruction was vouchsafed. This interesting institu- 

 tion was an experiment of some importance. It contained 6210 scholars 

 and over 500 teachers, was non-sectarian and formed practicallv for a 



