Na/i()//a/ Srin/Z/fic ninf liihicatioinil htstilitlioiis. 281 



the routine duties of life, we fnul him yickhn.i; to tli;it subtle native 

 force which all throu.^h life was constantly drawinj^' him away from 

 politics to science." 



Thus, during' these exciting weeks in hV'bruary, i.Soi, when Congress 

 was vainl}^ trying to untangle the dil^culties arising from the tie vote 

 between Jefferson and Burr, when every politician at the capital was 

 busy with schemes and counterschemes, this man, whose political fate 

 was balanced on a razor's edge, was corresponding with Doctor Wistar 

 in regard to some l)ones of the mammoth which he had just procured 

 from vShawangunk, in New York. Again, in 1808, when the excitement 

 over the Embargo was highest, and wdien every day brought fresh 

 denunciations of him and his policy, he was carrying on his geological 

 studies in the White House itself. Under his direction upward of 300 

 specimens of fossil bones had been brought from the famous Big Bone 

 lyick and spread in one of the large unfinished rooms of the Presidential 

 Mansion. Doctor Wistar was asked to come to Philadelphia and select 

 such as were needed to complete the collection of the Philosophical 

 Society. The exploration of the lick was made at the private expense 

 of Jefferson through the agenc)^ of General William Clarke, the western 

 explorer, and this may fairly be regarded as the beginning of American 

 governmental work in paleontology. 



His scientific tendencies led to much criticism, of which the well- 

 known lines by William Cullen Bryant, in The Embargo, afford a 

 very mild example.' He cast all calumny aside with the remark "that 

 he who had nothing to conceal from the press had nothing to fear from 

 it," and calmly went on his way. The senior members of his Cabinet 

 were James Madison, a man of the most enlightened sympathy with sci- 

 ence, and Gallatin, one of the earliest American philologists; while one of 

 his strongest supporters in Congress w^as Samuel Latham Mitchill, a 

 mighty promoter of scientific interests in his native State, whom Adams 

 wittily describes as "chemist, botanist, naturalist, physician, and poli- 

 tician, who supported the Republican party because Jefferson was its 

 leader, and Jefferson because he was a philosopher." 



During this administration the project for a great national institution 

 of learning was revived by Joel Barlow. In 1800, when Barlow was the 

 American minister in Paris, he said in a letter to Senator Baldwin : 



I have been writing a long letter to Jefferson on quite another subject. . . . It is 

 about learned societies, universities, public instruction, and the advantages you now 

 have for doing something great and good if you will take it up on proper principles. 

 If you will put me at the head of the Institution there proposed, and give it that 



' Go, wretch, resign the Presidential chair; 

 Disclose thy .secret measures, foul or fair. 

 Go, search with curious eyes for horned frogs 

 'Mid the wild wastes of Louisianian bogs, 

 Or where the Ohio rolls his turbid stream 

 Dig for huge bones, thy glory and thy theme. 



