Tin' Jh'ginniiigs o/.ln/crica/i Sciciirc. 4^5 



sophical Society and one of its vice-presidents. His paper On the use of 

 the thermometer in navigation was one of the first American contribu- 

 tions to scientific seamanship. 



The Rev. Doctor John Ewing [b. 1732, d. 1802], also a vice-president, 

 was provost of the university. He had been one of the observers of the 

 transit in 1769, of which he pubHshed an account in the Transactions 

 of the Philosophical Society. He early printed a volume of lectures on 

 natural philosophy, and was the strongest champion of John Godfrey, the 

 Philadelphian, in his claim to the invention of the reflecting quadrant.' 



Doctor James Woodhouse [b. 1770, d. 1809] was author and editor of 

 several chemical text-books and professor of chemistr)^ in the university, 

 a position which he took after it had been refused by Priestley. He made 

 experiments and observations on the vegetation of plants and investi- 

 gated the chemical and medical properties of the persimmon tree. He it 

 was who first demonstrated the superiority of anthracite to bituminous 

 coal by reason of its intensity and regularity of heating power.- 



The Rev. Ebeuezer Kinnersley [b. in Gloucester, England, November 

 30, 171 1 ; d. in Philadelphia, July 4, 1778] survived the Revolution, 

 though, in his latter years, not a contributor to science. The associate 

 of Franklin in the Philadelphia experiments in electricity, his discoveries 

 were famous in Europe as well as in America.^ It is claimed that he 

 originated the theory of the positive and negative in electricity; that 

 he first demonstrated the passage of electricity through water; and 

 that he first discovered that heat could be produced by electricity ; besides 

 inventing numerous mechanical devices of scientific interest. From 1753 

 to 1772 he was connected with the University of Pennsylvania, where 

 there may still be seen a window dedicated to his memory. 



Having already referred to the history of scientific instruction in 

 America," and shown that Hunter lectured on comparative anatomy in 

 Newport in 1754; Kuhn on botany, in Philadelphia, in 1768; Water- 

 house on natural history and botany, at Cambridge, in 1788; and some 

 unidentified scholars upon chemistry and natural history, in Philadelphia, 

 in 1785, it would seem unjust not to speak of Kinnersley' s career as a 

 lecturer. He seems to have been the first to deliver public scientific 



' Thomas Godfrey [says a recent authority] was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, 

 in 1704, and died in Philadelphia in December, 1749. He followed the trade of a 

 glazier in the metropolis, and, having a fondness for mathematical studies, marked 

 such books as he met with, subsequently acquiring Latin, that he might become 

 familiar with the mathematical work in that language. Having obtained a copy of 

 Newton's Principia, he described an improvement he had made in Davis' quadrant 

 to James Logan, who was so impressed that he at once addressed a letter to Edmund 

 Halley in England, giving a full description of the construction and uses of God- 

 frey's instrument. 



= Benjamin Silliman, Jr., American Contributions to Chemistry, p. 13. 



3 See Priestley's History of Electricity. 



■♦See previous address, p. 99. [This volume, p. 401.] 



