426 Mcmo7'ial of George Broivn Goode. 



ing his native state to do something in the same good but neglected 

 cause. ' 



The academy, from the first, was devoted chiefly to the physical 

 sciences, and the papers in its memoirs for the most part relate to astron- 

 omy and meteorology. 



Among its early members I find the names of but two naturalists : 

 The Rev. Manasseh Cutler, pastor of Ipswich Hamlet, one of the ear- 

 liest botanists of New England,* and William Dandridge Peck [b. 1763, 

 d. 1882], the author of the first paper on systematic zoology ever pub- 

 lished in America, a Description of Four Remarkable Fishes taken near 

 the Piscataqua in New Hampshire, published in 1794.^ Peck, after 

 graduating at Harvard, lived at Kittery, New Hampshire, and first 

 became interested in natural history b}' reading a wave-worn cop}- of 

 Linnaeus' s S3-stem of Nature, which he obtained from the ship which was 

 wrecked near his house. He became a good entomologist, and commu- 

 nicated much valualile material to Kirby in England, and was also one 

 of our first writers on the fungi. He was the first to occup}- the chair of 

 natural history in Harvard University, to which he was appointed in 1800. 



The Rev. Doctor Jedediah Morse [b. 1761; graduate of Yale, 1783; 

 d. 1826] was the earliest of American geographers, and appears, espe- 

 ciall3Mn the later gazetteers published by him, to have printed important 

 facts concerning the number and geographical distribution of the various 

 Indian tribes. 



The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1799, 

 one of the chief promoters being President Dwight [b. 1752, d. 1817], 

 whose Travels in New England and New York, printed in 182 1, abounds 

 with scientific observations. 



Another was E. C. Herrick [b. 181 1, d. 1862], for maiw years libra- 

 rian and subsequently treasurer of Yale College, whose obser\-ations 

 upon the aurora, made in the latter years of the last centur}^, are still 

 frequently quoted ; and later an active investigator of volcanic phenomena, 

 and the author of a treativSe on the Hessian fl)^ and its parasites, the 

 results of nine years' study; and of another on the existence of a planet 

 between Mercury and the Sun. 



Benjamin Silliman [b. in Truml)ull, Connecticut, August 8, 1779; d. 

 in New Haven, November 27, 1869], who, in 1802, became professor of 

 chemistry at Yale, began there his career of usefulness as an organizer, 

 teacher, and critic. One of his introductions to popular favor was the 

 paper which he, in conjunction with Professor Kingsley, publivShed, An 

 account of the meteor which burst over Weston, in Connecticut, in Decem- 

 ber, 1807. This paper attracted attention everywhere, for the nature 

 of meteors was not well understood in those days. Jefferson was reputed 



'John T. Kirkland, Memoirs of the American Academy, New Series, I, p. xxii. 



^See previous address, p. 95. [This vohime, p. 399.] 



'Memoirs of the American Academy of Sciences, II, Pt. 2, 1797, p. 46. 



