THE 



CANADIAN NATURALIST 



AND 



NOTES OF A VISIT TO SCIENTIFIC SCHOOLS AND 

 MUSEUMS IN THE UNITED STATES. 



By Principal Dawson, LL.D., F.E.S., <fec. 

 Away from snow and frost, on the rail, rapidly sweeping 

 through New England villages with their snug homes and 

 busy factories, we approach the great western emporium, the 

 lesser London, the commercial capital of the '' greater Britain" of 

 the western world — already numbering its million and a half 

 of people, and rivalling old London in all the higher and lower 

 phases of a city life. Our business is not with either its trade or 

 its gaiety. We have first to tell to such of its people as care 

 to know of such old world things, our story about " Primeval 

 Forests," and then to scrutinise, under the guidance of our friend 

 Dr. Newberry, the class-rooms, laboratories and museums of 

 Columbia college, a workshop of mind, aiming to train young 

 men to that practical grasp of science which shall enable them to 

 apply its principles to the better extraction and working into 

 useful purposes of the dark treasures of mother earth. Columbia 

 College is a brick building in a quaint old fashioned square, 

 once out of town, but overgrown by the rapid increase of the 

 great city, which swallows up farms, estates, and country houses 

 as if they were mere morsels to its voracious appetite. The 

 building, which was intended for an asylum, forms three sides of a 

 quadrangle, and has many long narrow rooms well lighted by 

 windows in the sides. It is regarded as merely a temporary 

 Vol. I. B No. K 



