1869.] DAWSON — SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES. 3 



vided foi-, it would be a very white spot, though but a very small 

 one, in the great Babel. 



From New York to New Haven is from a great city with 

 small science to a small city in which science bulks relatively 

 larger. On Christmas Day we looked in upon Professor Marsh, 

 almost buried among all that is richest and rarest in new scien- 

 tific literature and choice specimens, and enjoyed again the 

 genial look and kindly greeting of our friend Silliman, and 

 chatted for a little with the keen philosophic Dana, shattered 

 indeed in health, but still growing inwardly in spirit. The 

 Sheffield Scientific School is a modern outgrowth of the old 

 University of Yale College ; and originated in 1847 in the 

 organization of the " Department of Philosophy and Arts," 

 under Professors Silliman and Norton, representing respectively 

 the subjects of Applied Chemistry and Agriculture. The 

 scheme seems to have been devised by the elder Silliman, and to 

 have had its birth in his private efforts in previous years to givo 

 practical instruction to special students. This department was 

 maintained with moderate success for several years ; but at 

 length in 1860 Mr. Sheffield, a wealthy citizen of New Haven, 

 came forward to its aid with the handsome gift of a building and 

 apparatus valued at over $50,000 and a fund of $50,000 more to 

 endow Professorships of Engineering, Metallurgy and Chemistry. 

 This enlightened benefiction at once placed the school on a 

 respectable footing, and in 1863 it was further enlarged by the 

 application to its use of the share of the State of Connecticut in 

 the large grants of land made by Congress in that year for 

 purposes of' scientific education, —grants which have borne 

 similar good fruit in many other States. The Sheffield School 

 will also be a large sharer in the benefits which the University 

 will derive from the great Museum founded by Mr. Peabody, and 

 endowed by him with the sum of $150,000. The present 

 extremely valuable collections of Yale College are stored in 

 rooms of quite inadequate dimensions, and are being rapidly 

 augmented and improved. Prof. Marsh and Prof. Verrill alone 

 have vast stores of fossils, corals and other specimens, in base- 

 ments and cellars ; and when the whole shall be arranged in Mr. 

 Peabody's Museum, Yale College will be inferior to few Academic 

 institutions in the world in regard to its facilities for teaching the 

 science of nature through the eye. A special collection in the 

 Sheffield School, very valuable and well worthy of study, is that 



