The Bcgitniings of A)}urica)i Scii-iicr. 427 



to have said in reference to it, that it was easier to 1)eHeve that two 

 Yankee professors could he than to admit that stones could fall from 

 heaven, but I think this must be pigeonholed with the millions of 

 other slanders to which Jefferson was subjected in those days. I find in 

 the papers by Rittenhouse and Madison, published twenty years before, 

 by the Philosophical vSociety, matter-of-fact allusions to the falling of 

 meteors to the earth. 



vSilliman was the earli^ st of American scientific lecturers who a|)peared 

 before popular audiences, and, as founder and editor of the Journal of 

 vScience, did a service to science the value of which is l^eyond estimate 

 or computation. 



Benjamin Waterhou.se, professor of the theory and practice of medicine 

 in Harvard, 1783-1S12, was one of the earhest teachers of natural history 

 in America, and the author of a poem entitled The Botanist.' The 

 Rev. Jeremy Belknap [1). 1744, d. 179S], in his History of New Hamp- 

 shire, and the Rev. Samuel Williams [b. 1743, d. 1817], in his Natural 

 and Civil History of Vermont," made contributions to local natural his- 

 tory, and Captain Jonathan Carver [b. 1732, d. 1780], in his Travels 

 Through the Interior Parts of America, 177S, gave some meager infor- 

 mation as to the zoology and botany of regions previously unknown. 



In the South the prestige of colonial days seemed to have departed. 

 Except Jefferson, the oidy naturalist in Virginia was Doctor James Green- 

 way, of Dinwiddle County, a botanist of some merit. Mitchell returned 

 to England before the Revolution, and Garden followed in 1784. H. B. 

 Latrobe, of Baltimore, was an amateur ichthyologist, and Doctor James 

 MacBride, of Pineville, South Carolina [b. 1784, d. 18 17], was an active 

 botanist. Doctor Lionel Chalmers [b. 17 15, d. 1777], who was for 

 many years the leader of scientific activity in South Carolina, was (miitted 

 in the previous address. A graduate of Edinburgh, he was for forty 

 years a physician in Charleston. He recorded observations on meteor- 

 ology from 1750 to 1760, the foundation of his Treatise on the Weather 

 and Diseases of South Carolina [London, 1776], and published also 

 valuable papers on pathology. He was the host and patron of many 

 naturalists, such as the Bartrams. 



There was no lack of men in the South who were capable of appre- 

 ciating scientific work. Virginia had fourteen members in the American 

 Philosophical Society from 1780 to 1800, while Massachusetts and New 

 York had only six each, the Carolinas had eight, and Maryland six. 

 The population of the South was, however, widely dispersed and no con- 

 centration of effort was possible. To this was due, no doubt, the speedy 

 dissolution of the Academy of Arts and Sciences founded in Richmond 

 in 1788.3 



'Biography in Polyanthus, II. 



= Walpole, New Hampshire, 1794, Svo, p. 416. 



3See previous discourse, p. 9S. [This volume, p. 401.] 



