854 GEORGE JARVIS BRUSH. 



His son's early education was received in private schools. When 

 fifteen, he was sent to the school of Mr. Theodore S. Gold in West 

 Cornwall, Connecticut. Although he remained here for only six 

 months, the period appears to have had a strong influence on liis 

 subsequent career. Mr. Gold was an inspiring teacher and an enthu- 

 siastic naturalist, being especially interested in mineralogy, and aroused 

 in young Brush an interest in this subject, which was to bear rich 

 fruit after years. 



It was intended that the boy should follow in the footsteps of his 

 father and become a business man. Accordingly' he next took a 

 position in a mercantile house in Maiden Lane, New York City, where 

 he remained for about two years. A serious illness made it advisable 

 that he give up the close confinement of the mercantile life and it was 

 decided that he should become a farmer. This led to his coming to 

 New Haven to attend the lectures of Professors John P. Norton, and 

 Benjamin Silliman, Jr., in Agricultural and Practical Chemistry at 

 Yale College. His name appears in the college catalogue for 1848, 

 as a member of the second class in the " School of Applied Chemistry." 

 In 1852, he went to Louisville, Kentucky, as assistant to Professor 

 Benjamin Silliman, who was instructor in Chemistry and Toxicology 

 in the Medical Department of Louisville University. He remained 

 there until the spring of 1852. During this period, in the spring and 

 summer of 1851, he travelled in Europe in a party headed by the elder 

 Professor Silliman. In 1852 he was granted a special examination at 

 Yale College, made necessary by his absence, and at the commence- 

 ment of that year, he was given the newly established degree of Ph.B. 

 He was thus a member of the first class graduated from the Scientific 

 Department of that Institution; a department that he was destined 

 to afterwards develop into the Sheffield Scientific School. It is worthy 

 of note that this first class of fourteen members four afterwards^ 

 became prominent in Science. 



He spent the next college year, 1852-1853, as assistant in Chemistry 

 to Professor J. Lawrence Smith. Here he made the acquaintance of 

 William Barton Rogers, who was then teaching there. It is suggestive 

 that these two men, who were later to direct two of our great scientific 

 schools, were thus thrown together at an early period of their lives. 

 It was while he was at the University of Virginia that, in association 

 with Professor Smith, he published his first mineralogical papers, 

 entitled, "A Re-examination of American Minerals." This work 

 showed at once his ability as a scientific investigator and his interest 

 in mineralogy. It also led him to feel the necessity of further scientific 



