Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. 225 
speaking only of my own times and for yielding tothe necessity 
of introducing some notices of my own personal history, as con- 
nected, however humbly, with the progress of this science in the 
United States. 
Having been educated to the profession of law, I was induced 
by the late President Dwight of Yale College, to enter on a new 
career, and to endeavor to qualify myself for the departments of 
science, to which I have since been devoted, and of which I was 
then ignorant. 'T'wo or three years of preparation in this country 
and another year in Europe encouraged me to enter, in 1806, 
upon a fuller discharge of the duties which I had partially com- 
menced before going abroad. Chemistry was then my leading 
object, and mineralogy and geology were only appendages. In 
the latter sciences, it was then almost in vain that we sought in 
this country for cabinets or instructors.. The most common min- 
erals were known to very few, and I accounted it a piece of rare 
good fortune, that an introduction to the late Dr. Adam Seybert 
of Philadelphia,- then recently returned from the celebrated min- 
eral school of Werner, at Freyberg in Germany, enabled me to 
spread before that gentleman (Dr. Seybert) the entire cabinet of 
Yale College, which, for the sake of having the specimens named 
by him, I packed in a small portable box, and carried with me to 
Philadelphia. We may now, with pride and pleasure, contrast 
these anguste res of earlier days, with the ample cabinets which 
are at present found in our institutions as well as in the hands of 
Private individuals.* Geology was at that period, (1804~5,) less 
known among us than mineralogy. Most of the rocks were with- 
out a name, except so far as they were quarried for economical 
purposes, and classification of the strata was quite unknown. 
Passing over to England in the spring of 1805, and fixing my 
residence for six months in London, I found there no school, pub- 
lic or private, for geological instruction, and no association for the 
cultivation of the science, which was not even named in the 
English universities. To the deep ancient mines in the Peak of 
Derbyshire, in central England, I had already resorted, and to 
these explorations I added others in the still deeper mines of 
Cornwall, famous from high antiquity for their tin, and in more 
modern times for their copper, both obtained at profound depths, 
: * That of Yale College is particularly large and fine. 
Vol. xu, No. 2.—July—Sept. 1842. 29 
