The Brq-i/mi'iigs of Anio-icaii Sciowr. 427 



to have said in reference to it, that it was easier to beUeve that two 

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

 heaven, but I think this nuist be pi,^eonholed 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 Society, matter-of-fact allusions to the falling of 

 meteors to the earth. 



Silliman was the earliest of American scientific lecturers who a]>]ieared 

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

 Science, did a service to science the value of which is Ijcyond estimate 

 or computation. 



Benjamin Waterhouse, professor of the theory and ]>ractice of medicine 

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

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

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

 shire, and the Rev. Samuel Williams [b. 1743, d. 18 17], in his Natural 

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

 tory, and Captain Jonathan Car\'er [b. 1732, d. 1780], in his Travels 

 Throug^h the Interior Parts of America, 1778, ga\'e 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 only naturalist in \Mrginia 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. 

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

 MacBride, of Pineville, South Carolina [b. 1784, d. 1817], was an active 

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

 many years the leader of .scientific activity in vSouth Carolina, was omitted 

 in the previous address. A graduate of Edinburgh, he \\'as for forty 

 years a physician in Charleston. He recorded ob.servations on meteor- 

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

 and Diseases of South Carolina [Eondon, 177(1], and ])ublished also 

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

 naturali.sts, .such as the Bartrams. 



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

 ciating scientific work. Virginia had fourteen meml)ers in the American 

 Philo.sophical Societ}' from 1780 to 1800, wliile Massachusetts and New 

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

 The })opulation of the vSouth was, however, widel>' dispensed and no con- 

 centration of effort was po.s.sible. To this was due, no doubt, the s])eed>' 

 di.ssolution of the Academy of Arts and Sciences founded in Richmond 

 in 1788.3 



'Biography in Polyanthus, II. 



■"Walpole, New Hampshire-, 1794, 8vo, p. 416. 



3 See previous discourse, p. 98. [This volume, p. 401.] 



