The Beginnings of American Scieiice. 4^^ 



it was dark. The tea table was spread under the tree, and Mrs. Bache, who is the 

 only daughter of the Doctor and lives with him, served it out to the company. 



The Doctor showed me a curiosity he had just received, and with which he was 

 much pleased. It was a snake with two heads, preserved in a large vial. It was 

 about ten inches long, well proportioned, the heads perfect, and united to the 

 body about one-fourth of an inch below the extremities of the jaws. He showed me 

 a drawing of one entirely similar, found near Lake Champlain. He spoke of the 

 situation of this snake, if it was traveling among bushes, and one head should choose 

 to go on one side of the stem of a bush and the other head should prefer the other 

 side, and neither of the heads would consent to come back or give way to the other. 

 He was then going to mention a humorous matter that had that day taken place 

 in the Convention, in consequence of his comparing the snake to America, for he 

 seemed to forget that everything in the Convention was to be kept a profound secret; 

 but this was suggested to him, and I was deprived of the story. 



After it was dark we went into the house, and he invited me into his library, which 

 is likewise his study. It is a very large chamber and high-studded. The walls were 

 covered with shelves filled with books ; besides, there were four large alcoves, ex- 

 tending two-thirds of the length of the chamber, filled in the same manner. I pre- 

 sume this is the largest and by far the best private library in America. He showed 

 us a glass machine for exhibiting the circulation of the blood in the arteries and 

 veins of the human body. The circulation is exhibited by the passing of a red fluid 

 from a reservoir into numerous capillary tubes of glass, ramified in every direction, 

 and then returning in similar tubes to the reservoir, which was done with great 

 velocity, and without any power to act visibly upon the fluid, and had the appear- 

 ance of perpetual motion. Another great curiosity was a rolling press for taking 

 copies of letters or any other writing. A sheet of paper is completely copied in less 

 than two minutes, the copy as fair as the original, and without effacing it in the 

 smallest degree. It is an invention of his own, and extremely useful in many situa- 

 tions in life. He also showed us his long artificial arm and hand for taking down 

 and putting up books on high shelves, out of reach, and his great armchair with 

 rockers, and a large fan placed over it, with which he fans himself, while he sits 

 reading, with only a slight motion of his foot, and many other curiosities and inven- 

 tions, all his own, but of lesser note. Over his mantel-tree he has a prodigious 

 number of medals, busts, and casts in wax or plaster of paris, which are the effigies 

 of the most noted characters in Europe. But what the Doctor wished especially to 

 show me was a huge volume on botanv, which indeed afforded me the greatest pleas- 

 ure of any one thing in his library. It was a single volume, but so large that it was 

 with great difficulty that the Doctor was able to raise it from a low shelf and lift it to 

 the table ; but, with that senile ambition common to old people, he insisted on doing 

 it himself, and would permit no one to assist him, merely to show how much 

 strength he had remaining. It contained the whole of Linnaeus Systema Vege- 

 tabilium, with large cuts of every plant colored from nature. It was a feast to me, and 

 the Doctor seemed to enjoy it as well as myself. We spent a couple of hours exam- 

 ining this volume, while the other gentlemen amused themselves with other matters. 

 The Doctor is not a botanist, but lamented that he did not in early life attend to this 

 science. He delights in natural history, and expressed an earnest wish that I would 

 pursue the plan I had begun, and hoped this science, so much neglected in America, 

 would be pursued with as much ardor here as it is now in every part of Europe. I 

 wanted, for three months at least, to have devoted myself entirely to this one volume, 

 but, fearing I should be tedious to the Doctor, I shut the book, though he urged me to 

 examine it longer. He seemed extremely fond, through the course of the visit, of 

 dwelling on philosophical subjects, and particularly that of natural history, while 

 the other gentlemen were swallowed up in politics. This was a favorable circum- 

 stance to me, for almost the whole of his conversation was addressed to me, and I 



