TJic P>cgi)ui{)igs of A/i/en'caii Scio/cc. 423 



1792 was appointed professor of cliemistr\-, natural history, and philoso- 

 phy in Columbia College. Although during most of his long life a med- 

 ical professor and editor and for many years Representative and Senator 

 in Congress, he continued active in the interests of general science. He 

 made many contributions to systematic natural history, notably a History 

 of the Fishes of New York, and his edition of Bewick's General History 

 of Quadrupeds, published in New York in 1S04 with notes and additions, 

 and some figures of American animals, was the earliest American work 

 of the kind. He was the first in America to lecture ui)on geology, and 

 jniblished several papers upon this .science. His mineralogical explora- 

 tion of the banks of the Hud.son River in 1796, under the Society for 

 the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Useful Arts, founded 

 l)y himself, was our earliest attempt at this kind of research, and in 1794 

 he publi.shed an es.say on the Nomenclature of the New Chemistry, the 

 first American paper on chemical philosophy, and engaged in a contro- 

 versy with Priestley in defense of the nomenclature of Lavoisier, which 

 he was the first American to adopt. 



His discour.se on The Botanical History of North and South America 

 was also a pioneer effort. He was an early leader in ethnological inqui- 

 ries and a vigorous writer on political topics. His Life of Tannnany, the 

 Indian chief (New York, 1795), is a cla.ssic, and he was well known to 

 our grandfathers as the author of An Addre.ss to the Fredes or People of 

 the United States, iu which he proposed that Fredonia should be adopted 

 as the name of the nation. 



Doctor Mitchill was a poet' and a humori.st and a member of the liter- 

 ary circles of his da^^ In The Croakers, Rodman Drake thus addre.s.sed 

 him as The vSurgeon -General of New York: 



It niattens not liow high or low it is 



Thou knowest each hill and vale- of knowledge, 



r^ellow of forty-nine societies 



And lecturer in Ilosack'.s College. 



Fitz-Greene Halleck also paid his compliments in the following terms: 



Time was when Doctor Mitchill's word was law, 

 When Monkeys, Mon.sters, Whales and Ivscjuiniaux, 

 A.sked but a letter from his ready hand, 

 To be the theme and won<k'r of the land. 



These and other pleasantries, of which many are ([Uoted in Fairchild's 

 admirable History of the New York Academy of Sciences, gives us an 

 idea of the provinciality of New York sixty years ago, when ever}- citizen 

 woidd .seem to have known the ])rincipal local representatives of .science, 

 and to have felt a sen.se of personal proprietorship in him and in his 

 projects. 



'Examples of his verses may be found in Duj'ckinck's Cyclopaedia of American 

 Literature, I, p. 520. 



