548 Mr. Lea on the JVaiades. 



feeling that will soon exist against him as a naturalist. Mr. Say 

 deserved to be treated, for many reasons, with the greatest re- 

 spect, and to have received from him the ample acknowledgments 

 which other naturalists are happy to make to his great merits. 

 Rafinesque has been a perfect mine to Mr. Lea. Barnes can 

 be so no more. The labour which he has bestowed on his papers 

 has been thrown away ; they will soon be of no more value than 

 picture books. 



As to the eulogist of Mr. Lea, he, it is evident, knows nothing 

 of conchology. It is easy, from a few notes, to draw up an eulo- 

 gium, and quite as easy to fall into continual errors. No man 

 can long write intelligently on a subject he does not understand. 

 In this instance the habit of eulogy has constantly led the writer 

 too far, even where, without scientific information, he ought not 

 to have erred. When he says, speaking of Mr. Lea's plates, 

 that " they certainly surpass every thing of the kind yet done in 

 the United States," it is due to truth to say it is not so; that 

 many of Mr. Say's figures are better drawn, better coloured, and 

 are truer to nature. I would also mention Mr. Conrad's beau- 

 tiful figures, if I were not satisfied that the eulogist is beyond the 

 reach of any arguments I can offer to him. I regret, sincerely, 

 that it is so, and that I should be compelled to express my dis- 

 satisfaction with the loose and very injurious manner, in which 

 the branches of natural history are treated in the New Haven 

 Journal. 



I am, it appears, not alone in this. The review of a late 

 translation in your Journal, of the regiie animal, has excited a 

 great deal of attention. The Journal of Professor Silliman has 

 been, for a long time, the only scientifical periodical to which 

 we have been accustomed to look for correct information ; there 

 is a feeling abroad that will cause this to be done with less con- 

 fidence. Editors who reside in unfavourable situations, far from 

 the busy current of human affairs, and whose time is too often 

 filled to repletion with the discharge of those more serious and 

 exacting duties belonging to the instruction of collegiate youth, 

 cannot devote much of their time to practical investigations in 

 the branches of natural science. Institutions, situated as Yale 

 college is, are capable of nourishing profound and contemplative 

 minds, of producing learned theologians, and acute metaphysi- 

 cians, but naturalists cannot be produced there. To become a 



