SKETCH OF JAMES CURTIS BOOTH. 117 



for them, and was tlie first American student who visited Ger- 

 many for that purpose. He spent the year 1833 .in Wohler's pri- 

 vate laboratory in Cassel ; then practiced for nine months in the 

 laboratory of Prof. Gustav Magnus, in Berlin ; and employed the 

 rest of three years abroad in attending lectures in Berlin and 

 Vienna, and in visiting manufacturing establishments on the 

 Continent and in England. 



Having returned home, Mr. Booth established, in 1836, a stu- 

 dent's laboratory — " the parent of all our existing laboratories for 

 students in applied chemistry " — and became a teacher, " But it 

 ■was no part of Mr. Booth's idea," Mr. Dubois says, " to make the 

 laboratory course usurp the rightful position of the text-book 

 and the lecture. He saw the great want of a supplementer rather 

 than a supplanter. How truly he discerned what the scientific as 

 well as the commercial world required, and how fully he met that 

 requirement, needs no explanation here. The student's labora- 

 tories all over the country — if not beyond — as well as the throng 

 of students who have come into and gone from his own laboratory 

 during the past half-century — all attest the foresight, the judg- 

 ment, the energy of a scientist and a business man." 



In 1836 Mr. Booth was appointed Professor of Chemistry ap- 

 plied to the Fine Arts, in the Franklin Institute. In this capacity 

 he delivered, between 1836 and 1845, three courses of lectures, of 

 three seasons to each course. From 1842 to 1845 he was also 

 Professor of Chemistry in the Central High School of Philadel- 

 phia. He interested himself in mineralogy and geology, and en- 

 gaged in the Geological Surveys of Pennsylvania and Delaware, 

 concerning which Prof, J. P. Lesley has written : " Prof, Booth 

 and John Frazer, then a young man, were appointed by Prof, 

 Rogers, in the spring of 1836, his two assistants in prosecuting the 

 work of the first Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, From 

 spring to fall they traveled along the Susquehanna and Juniata 

 Valleys, blocking out the order of the great formations. Prof. 

 Booth was sent by Prof. Rogers up the Potomac to make a section 

 which could be compared with the Juniata section ; and, when 

 these three met at Huntingdon, he announced, to the astonishment 

 of Mr. Rogers, that the mountains which fill the middle belt of 

 Pennsylvania were made by two separate formations, now known 

 as No. IV and ISTo. X. Mr. Rogers was unwilling to accept this 

 conclusion, and instructed Mr. Frazer to go to the Huntingdon 

 Bedford line and make a cross-section from the Broad-Top coal 

 down to the limestone of Morrison's Cove. At the end of the 

 week the three met again in Huntingdon, and Mr. Frazer con- 

 firmed the statement of Prof. Booth. Mr. Rogers was still dis- 

 satisfied, and then went himself to repeat the section made by 

 Mr. Frazer, finding it correct, and then accepting Prof. Booth's 



