VIII BULLETIN NO. 23, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Before this time there were no public lectures on natural history, and 

 the two youug frieuds continued to grope their way without instruction 

 or the help of text-books. While they had but little time to ramble 

 through the country — both being clerks in a mercantile establishment— 

 still their puny collections had great interest to them. One of their 

 extended excursions was to examine the coal mines then opened above 

 Wilkes Barre, where they found the slates contained mollusca, which Mr. 

 Lea some forty years afterward described in the Journal of the Academy 

 of ISTatural Sciences. On their return they walked from there over the 

 Pocono Mountain through the Wind Gap, where Mr. Lea, found a trilo- 

 bite, the first they had ever seen, and thence down the Delaware Eiver, 

 observing the strata all the way. 



They finally learned of the Academy of Natural Sciences, which 

 had been in existence about three years, and in 1815 they were both 

 elected members on the same evening. From that time they became 

 active members of the youug society, learning from the older members, 

 and rendering assistance by bringing specimens which they had col- 

 lected. Mr. Lea remembers that Mr. Say founded his genus Alasmo- 

 donta on asiugle valve which he himself had picked up on the river 

 shore a( Chilicothe, Ohio, and which he carried from that place to Phil- 

 adelphia in his saddle-bags. 



In 181G Mr. Vanuxem went to Paris to study at the School of Mines, 

 and remained there nearly three years under the great masters of sci- 

 ence of that school. On his return he was offered the professorship of 

 chemistry in the College of South Carolina at Columbia. 



Afterwards he was appointed one of the four geologists of the great 

 geological survey of the State of New York. During all this period of 

 over forty years the closest friendship existed between the two friends 

 until the death of Mr. Vanuxem, in 1848. 



In 1817 Mr. Lea published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences his first paper, entitled "An account of the minerals at pres- 

 ent known to exist in the vicinity of Philadelphia," it being the result 

 of several years of close examination. 



Early in 1818 the late Professor Silliman issued the prospectus of the 

 American Journal of Science, which, fortunately for the science of this 

 country, has continued to this day. In this prospectus he says : " It will 

 be a leading object of this journal to illustrate American natural his- 

 tory, and especially mineralogy and geology." Mr. Lea, pleased with 

 the promises to this prospectus, procured fourteen subscribers among 

 the prominent members of the academy, and sent the names to Profes- 

 sor Silliman, who, years afterwards, told him that " this was the turn- 

 ing point of the scheme," and that in receiving such encouragement from 

 a i)erson with whom he had no personal acquaintance he was sure the 

 iourual would be successful. He requested Mr. Lea to contribute arti- 

 cles, and sometimes consulted him about papers offered, and in a letter 

 the following November he informed him that " the edition of No. 1 is 



