212 DANIEL COIT OILMAN. 



Journal of Commerce, the Independent ', and the Tribune, and 

 as an occasional contributor to other periodicals, his letters, be- 

 fore the days of ocean telegraphs, not only from Russia but 

 also from Berlin some months later, when he was a student in 

 the university, were interesting and instructive. During his 

 residence in Berlin he established lasting friendship with many 

 distinguished scholars, among whom were Professor Perts, the 

 historian and royal librarian, and, in the department of physical 

 and political geography in which he was specially interested, 

 with the eminent Karl Ritter and F. Adolph Trendelenburg. 

 In 1855 he was appointed commissioner from the state of Con- 

 necticut to the Universal Exposition at Paris, where he became 

 secretary of the Board of Associated Commissioners. 



Returning to New Haven at the close of 1855 he was made 

 assistant librarian of Yale College in 1856, and becoming libra- 

 rian in 1858, he held that position until he resigned it in 1865. 

 He was appointed secretary of the State Board of Education, 

 was associated with the Honorable Henry Barnard in the publi- 

 cation of the Connecticut Common School Journal, and coope- 

 rating with Professor Arnold Guyot, prepared a series of school 

 geographies and maps. He was also a contributor to Apple- 

 ton's American Enyclopedia under the editorship of Charles A. 

 Dana, and with Professor William D. Whitney and others, 

 assisted Professor Noah Porter in the revision of Webster's Dic- 

 tionary. 



After resigning the office of librarian in 1865 he devoted him- 

 self more directly to his duties as professor of physical and po- 

 litical geography in the Sheffield Scientific School, to which 

 office he had been appointed by the corporation of Yale College 

 in 1863. Associated with Professor George J. Brush and others, 

 he was efficient in extending and developing the work of the 

 school of which he became practically the chief executive, se- 

 curing for it large subscriptions for its permanent endowment, 

 especially in connection with the munificent gifts of Joseph E. 

 Sheffield, and Oliver S. Winchester and the family of Mrs. 

 Cornelia L. Hillhouse, for an astronomical observatory. In 

 1870 he was elected President of the University of California, 

 but declined the office, which, however, he assumed on his re- 



