xlii Mr. Pickering’s Eulogy on 
could give his undivided attention to his favorite science ; nor was 
he, like that distinguished man, at once placed in comparatively 
affluent circumstances, and relieved from all solicitude for those 
necessary means of living, for which the student as well as the man 
of business must provide ; but, on the contrary, obliged to maintain 
a constant struggle against the formidable obstacles I have men- 
tioned, and with a slender physical constitution, that demanded 
incessant vigilance, lest its powers should be prostrated by the 
exertions of his ever active intellect; how much did he achieve 
within the term of a life, shorter by thirteen years than that of his 
great exemplar, and during which he could pursue the study of his 
favorite science only at those intervals of leisure, which the daily 
avocations of business allowed him. 
It is under such circumstances, that we should compare the 
scientific labors of our President with those of the eminent men of 
other countries ; and, especially, with those of the illustrious author, 
whose great work is the subject of the profound and lucid Commen- 
tary, of which I am now to give a brief account. 
Here I may, in the first place, remark, that the mere mechanical 
bulk of Dr. Bowditch’s work exhibits an amount of actual labor 
that astonishes us. The four volumes now completed contain nearly 
a thousand pages each; and Dr. Bowditch has given three pages 
of commentary for every two of the original; the text of which he 
has followed, volume by volume, to the end of the fourth, of which 
he had just strength enough remaining to revise the thousandth 
page a few days before his death. 
The scientific men of Great Britain were astonished at his 
attempting what they justly called a “gigantic task,” — the task of 
translating into our common language, and elucidating with a copi- 
ous and able commentary, a work, which they acknowledge to be 
so profound, that there were hardly twelve persons in that kingdom, 
