414 Memorial of George Bn)u>n Goode. 



It was fully demonstrated, I think, in ni}- former address, that there 

 were good zoologists in America long before there were medical schools, 

 and that Philadelphia was not the cradle of American natural history, 

 although during its period of political preeminence, immediately after the 

 Revolution, scientific activities of all kinds centered in that city. As for 

 the medical schools, it is at least probable that they have spoiled more 

 naturalists than they have fostered. 



Doctor Adam Kuhn [b. 1741, d. 18 17] was the professor of botany in 

 1768' — the first in America — and was labeled by his contemporaries the 

 favorite pupil of lyinnaeus. Professor Gray, in a recent letter to the 

 writer, refers to this saying as a myth; and it surely seems strange that 

 a disciple beloved by the great Swede could have done so little for botany. 

 Barton, in a letter, in 1792, to Thunberg, who then occupied the seat of 

 Linnaeus in the University of Upsala, said: 



The electricity of your immortal Linn^ has hardly been felt in this Ultima Thule 

 of science. Had a number of the pupils of that great man spread themselves along, 

 and settled in the countries of North America, the riches of this world of natural 

 treasures would have been better known. But alas ! the one only pupil of your 

 predecessor that has made choice of America as the place of his residence has added 

 nothing to the stock of natural knowledge.^ 



The Rev. Nicholas Collin, rector of the Swedish churches in Pennsyl- 

 vania, was a fellow-countryman and acquaintance of lyinnaeus^ and an 

 accomplished botanist, having been one of the editors of Muhlenberg's 

 work upon the grasses, and an early writer on American linguistics. He 

 read before the Philosophical Society, in 1789, An essay on those inquiries 

 in natural philosophy which at present are most beneficial to the United 

 States of North America, which was the first attempt to lay out a sys- 

 tematic plan for the direction of scientific research in America. One of 

 the most interesting suggestions he made was that the Mammoth was still 

 in existence. 



The vast Mahmot [said he] is perhaps yet stalking through the western wilder- 

 ness; but if he is no more, let us carefully gather his remains, and even try to find a 

 whole skeleton of this giant, to whom the elephant was but a calf.'' 



General Jonathan Williams, U. S. A. [b. 1750, d. 1815], was first 

 superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point and father of the 

 Corps of Kngineers. He was a nephew of Franklin and his secretary 

 of legation in France, and, after his return to Philadelphia, was for many 

 years a judge of the court of common pleas, his military career not begin- 

 ning till 1801. This versatile man was a leading member of the Philo- 



' See previous address, p. 99. [This volume, p. 402.] 



- Benjamin S. Barton, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, III, 



P- 339- .._ 



31 often heard the great Linnaeus wish that he could have explored the continent 



of North America. Collin, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 



III, p. XV. 



■•Idem., p. xxiv, 



