The Beginnings oJWnwrican Science. 443 



In 1817 Josiali Meigs, Commissioner of the Land Office, issued a circu- 

 lar to the several registers of the land offices of the United vStates requir- 

 ing them to keep daily meteorological observations, and also to report 

 upon such phenomena as the times of the unfolding of leaves of plants 

 and the dates of flowering, the migrations of birds and fishes, the dates 

 of spawning of fishes, the hibernation of animals, the history of locusts 

 and other insects in large numbers, the falling of stones and other bodies 

 from the amosphere, the direction of meteors, and discoveries relative to 

 the antiquities of the country. 



It does not appear that anything ever resulted from this step, but it is 

 referred to as an indication that, seventy years ago, our Government was 

 willing to use its civil-service officials in the interest of science. A few 

 years later the same idea was carried into effect b}^ the Smithsonian 

 Institution. 



In those early days each of the principal cities had public museums 

 founded and supported by private enterprise. Their proprietors were 

 men of scientific tastes, who affiliated with the naturalists of the day and 

 placed their collections freely at the disposal of investigators. 



The earliest was the Philadelphia Museum, established by Charles 

 Willson Peale, and for a time housed in the building of the American 

 Philosophical Society. In iSoo it was full of popular attractions: 



There were a mammoth's tooth from the Ohio, and a woman's shoe from Canton ; 

 nests of the kind used to make soup of, and a Chinese fan 6 feet long ; bits of asbestus, 

 belts of wampum, stuffed birds and feathers from the Friendly Islands, scalps, toma- 

 hawks, and long lines of portraits of great men of the Revolutionary war. To visit 

 the Museum, to wander through the rooms, play upon the organ, examine the rude 

 electrical machine, and have a profile drawn by the physiognomitian, were pleasures 

 from which no stranger to the city ever refrained. 



Doctor Hare's oxyhydrogen blowpipe was shown in this museum by 

 Mr. Rubens Peale as early as 18 10. 



The Baltimore Mu.seum was managed by Rembrandt Peale, and was 

 in existence as early as 18 15 and as late as 1830.' 



EarHer efforts were made, however, in Philadelphia. Doctor Chovet, 

 of that city, had a collection of wax anatomical models made by him in 

 Europe, and Professor John Morgan, of the University of Pennsylvania, 

 who learned his methods from the Hunters in London and Sue in Paris, 

 was also forming such a collection before the Revolution.^ 



The Cohimbian Museum and Ttirrell's Museum, in Boston, are spoken 

 of in the annals of the day, and there was a small collection in the attic 

 of the State House in Hartford. 



'Baltimore has a handsome museum, superintended by one of the Peale family, 



well known for their devotion to natural science and to works of art. It is not their 



fault if the specimens which they are enabled to displaj^ in the latter department are 



.very inferior to their splendid exhibitions in the former. — Mrs. TroUope, Domestic 



Manners of the Americans. London, I, 1832, p. 296. 



^Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, II, p. 366. 



