LIFE OF PROFESSOR CHESTER DEWEY. " 235 



ical system of mineralogical classificatiou. Tbe natural system of botany, 

 founded by the younger Jussieu, was, during this period, slowly making 

 its way to public favor. Cuvier's " Fossil Bones," which first raised 

 geology to the rank of a science, was not published till 1812. The "Ani- 

 mal Kingdom," which rendered a similar service to systematic zoology, 

 appeared in 1817. William Smith, who, in England, was learning to 

 describe strata in difierent parts of the island, and to identify them by 

 their fossil remains, gave his results to the public about the same period, 

 his most important work having been imblished in 1815. Many other 

 facts in the history of science, which will occur to those who now hear 

 me, illustrate the fact that our scientific pioneers labored under the dis- 

 advantage of having begun their career with the infancy of the sciences 

 which they cultivated. They grew intellectually with the growth of 

 natural knowledge, and their active lives stretched over the whole x^eriod 

 during which these sciences were born and reached maturity. 



The scientific attainments of these men were not made like those of 

 young naturalists in our time, by the study of a body of coherent and 

 established truths, or by the accumulation of new facts which take their 

 places naturally under laws already verified, or fall into classifications 

 already fixed and named. Their attainments were made amidst sudden 

 and almost violent revolutions in method and changes in fundamental 

 ideas, which were startling to the timid and bewildering to the weak. 

 It required no ordinary courage and manliness, no ordinary faith in the 

 universality and coherence of the Almighty's plan in the universe, to 

 accept and promulgate ideas which seemed subversive of all established 

 opinions — utterly superseding and setting at naught the " wisdom of the 

 ancients." 



The facilities for the acquisition of new facts, and the testing and 

 verification of the new hypotheses, were inadequate in tlie extreme. 

 Laboratories and apparatus were to be created or invented. Cabinets 

 of minerals were meager, and collections of fossils were almost unknown. 

 A single illustration in point we give from an article in Sillimau's Jour- 

 nal for 1805. It will be borne in mind that Professor Silliman, senior, 

 was appointed professor of chemistry and natural history in Yale Col- 

 lege in 1805. The college was then over a century old, and under the 

 presidency of Dr. Dwight. We are told that " not only the chemical 

 laboratory, but also the cabinet of minerals, owed its existence to his 

 [Professor Silliman's] energy. * * * About the time when Mr. Sil- 

 liman was appointed a professor, the entire mineralogical and geological 

 collection of Yale College was transported to Philadelphia in one small 

 box, that the specimens might be named by Dr. Adam Seybert, then 

 fresh from Werner's school at Freiberg, the only man in this country 

 who could be regarded as a mineralogist sufficiently trained for that 

 work." This illustrates the facilities for the study and illustration of 

 natural science at Yale College, and we can readily infer the discourag- 

 ing circumstances under which Dr. Dewey began his work and collec- 



