The Beginniuos of A77ierican Science. 453 



In 1838 the United States Kxploring Expedition under Wilkes was 

 sent upon its voyage of circumnavigation, having upon its staff a young 

 naturahst named Dana, whose studies upon the crustaceans and radiates 

 of the expedition have made him a world-wide reputation, entirely inde- 

 pendent of that which he has since gained as a mineralogist and geologist. 



It is customary to refer to the Wilkes expedition as having been sent 

 out entirely in the interests of science. As a matter of fact it was organ- 

 ized primarily in the interests of the whale fishery of the United States. 



Dana, before his departure with Wilkes, had published, in 1837, the 

 first edition of his System of Mineralogy, a work which, in its subsequent 

 editions, has become the standard manual of the world. 



The publication of lyyell's Principles of Geology at the beginning of 

 this decade (1830) had given new direction to the thoughts of our geolo- 

 gists, and they were all hard at work under its inspiration. 



With 1839 ended the second of our thirty-year periods — the one which 

 I have chosen to speak of as the period of Silliman — not so much because 

 of the investigations of the New Haven professor, as on account of his 

 influence in the promotion of American science and scientific institutions. 



This was a time of hard work, and we must not withhold our praise 

 from the noble little company of pioneers who were in those years build- 

 ing the foundations upon which the scientific institutions of to-day are 

 resting. 



The difficulties and drawbacks of scientific research at this time have 

 been well described by one who knew them :' 



The professedly scientific institutions of our country issued from time to time, 

 though at considerable intervals, volumes of Transactions and Proceedings unques- 

 tionably not without their influence in keeping alive the scarcely kindled flame, 

 but whose contents, as might be expected, were for the most part rather in con- 

 formity with the then existing standard of excellence than in advance of it. 

 Natural History in the United States was the mere sorting of genera and species; 

 the highest requisite for distinction in any physical science was the knowledge 

 of what European students had attained;— astronomy was in general confined to 

 observations, and those not of the most refined character, and its merely descriptive 

 departments were estimated far more highly than the study of its laws. Astro- 

 nomical computation had hardly risen above the ciphering out of eclipses and occul- 

 tations. Indeed, I risk nothing in saying that Astronomy had lost ground in Amer- 

 ica since those Colonial times when men like Rittenhouse kept up a constant 

 scientific communication with students of Astronomy beyond the sfeas. And I 

 believe I may further say, that a single instance of a man's devoting himself to 

 science as the only earthly guide, aim, and object of his life, while unassured of a 

 professor's chair or some analogous appointment, upon which he might depend for 

 subsistence, was utterly unknown. 



Such was the state of science in general. In Astronomy the expensive appliances 

 requisite for all observations of the higher class were wanting, and there was not 

 in the United States, with the exception of the Hudson Observatory, to which Pro- 

 cessor Loomis devoted such hours as he could spare from his duties in the College, 



'B. A. Gould, Address in Commemoration of Sears Cook Walker. Proceedings of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of Science, VIII, 1854, p. 25. 



