The Brq-inf/fi/os of American Science. 4^3 



1792 was appointed professor of chemistry, natural history, and philoso- 

 phy in Columbia Collei;e. Althoujj^h during most of his long life a med- 

 ical professor and editor and for many years Representative and vSenator 

 in Congress, he continued active in the interests of general science. He 

 made many contributions to systematic natural history, notably a History 

 of the Fishes of New York, and his edition of Bewick's General Plistory 

 of Quadrupeds, published in New York in 1804 with notes and additions, 

 and some figures of American animals, was the earliest American work 

 of the kind. He was the first in America to lecture upon geology, and 

 published several papers upon this science. His mincralogical explora- 

 tion of the banks of the Hudson River in 1796, under tlie Society for 

 the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Useful Arts, founded 

 l)y himself, was our earliest attempt at this kind of research, and in 1794 

 he published an essay on the Nomenclature of the New Chemistry, the 

 first American paper on chemical philosoph}', and engaged in a contro- 

 versy with Priestley in defense of the nomenclature of Lavoisier, which 

 he was the first American to adopt. 



His discourse on The Botanical History of North and South America 

 was also a pioneer effort. He was an early leader in ethnological inqui- 

 ries and a vigorous writer on political topics. His lyife of Tannnany, the 

 Indian chief (New York, 1795), is a classic, and he was well known to 

 our grandfathers as the author of An Address to the Fredes or People of 

 the United States, in which he proposed that Fredonia should be adopted 

 as the name of the nation. 



Doctor Mitchill was a poet ' and a humorist and a member of the liter- 

 ary circles of his day. In The Croakers, Rodman Drake thus addressed 

 him as The Surgeon -General of New York: 



It matters not how high or low it is 



Thou knowest each hill and vale of knowledge. 



Fellow of forty-nine societies 



And lecturer in Hosack's College. 



Fitz-Greene Halleck also paid his compliments in the following terms: 



Time was when Doctor Mitchill's word was law, 

 When Monkeys, Monsters, Whales and Esquimaux, 

 Asked but a letter from his ready hand. 

 To be the theme and wonder of the land. 



These and other pleasantries, of which many are quoted in Fairchild's 

 admirable History of the New York Academy of Sciences, gives us an 

 idea of the provinciality of New York sixty years ago, when every citizen 

 would seem to have known the principal local representatives of science, 

 and to have felt a sense of personal proprietorship in him and in his 

 projects. 



'Examples of his verses may be found in Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia of American 

 Literature, I, p. 520. 



