Beginnings of Natjiral History in America. 395 



on a footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, anion,, the most 

 useful of sciences and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the 

 human race. 



It was the scientific foresight of Jefferson, so manifest in such letters, 

 which led him to advocate so vigorously the idea that science must be 

 the corner stone of our Republic. 



In 1789 he wrote from Paris to Doctor Willard, president of Harvard 

 College : 



To t)octor W11.T.ARD: 



What a field have we at our doors to signalize ourselves in. The botany of America 

 is far from being exhausted, its mineralogy is untouched, and its natural history or 

 zoology totally mistaken and misrepresented. . . . It is for such institutions as 

 that over which you preside so worthily, sir, to do justice to our country, its produc- 

 tions, and its genius. It is the work to which the young men you are forming should 

 lay their hands. We have spent the prime of our lives in procuring them the precious 

 blessing of liberty. Let them spend theirs in showing that it is the great parent of 

 science and of virtue, and that a nation will be great in both always in proportion 



as it is free. 



Thomas Jefferson. 



To Jefferson's interest was due the organization of the first Government 

 exploring expedition. As early as 1780 we find him anxious to promote 

 an expedition to the upper portion of the Mississippi Valley, and offering 

 to raise 1,000 guineas for the purpOvSe from private sources, and while he 

 was President he dispatched Lewis and Clarke upon their famous expe- 

 dition into the Northwest — the precursor of all the similar enterprises 

 carried on by the General Government, which have culminated in our 

 magnificent Geological Survey. 



Jefferson's personal influence in favor of science was of incalculable 

 value. Transferred from the presidency of the principal American scien- 

 tific society to the Presidency of the nation, he carried with him to the 

 Executive Mansion the tastes and habits of a scientific investigator. Mr. 

 lyUther, in his recent essay upon Jefferson as a Naturalist,' has shown 

 that during his residence in Paris he kept the four principal colleges — 

 Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and the College of Philadelphia — 

 informed of all that happened in the scientific circles of Europe. 



He wrote to one correspondent: " Nature intended me for the tranquil 

 pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. ' ' To another 

 he said: "Your first gives me information in the line of natural history, 

 and the .second promises political news. The first is my passion, the last 

 my duty, and therefore both desirable." 



When Jefferson went to Philadelphia to be inaugurated Vice-President 

 he carried with him a collection of fossil bones which he had obtained in 

 Greenbrier County, West Virginia, together with a paper, in which were 

 formulated the results of his studies upon them. This was publi.shed in 



' Magazine of American History, April, 1885, p. y;^). 



