332 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



research a corps of efficient laborers, and has furnished a 

 ready means of presenting the results of their labors to the 

 world, through a medium well suited to insure attention, 

 and to secure proper acknowledgment for originality and 

 priority. Nor are the results which have been thus evoked 

 few or unimportant, since many of them relate to the ob 

 jects and phenomena of a vast continent almost entirely 

 unexplored, in which Nature has exhibited some of her 

 operations on a scale of grandeur well calculated to correct 

 the immature deductions from too limited a survey of similar 

 appearances in the Old World. For conducting such a jour 

 nal. Professor Silliman was admirably well qualified. He oc 

 cupied a conspicuous position in one of the oldest and most 

 respectable institutions of learning in this country; he was 

 intimately acquainted with the literature of science ; was a 

 fluent, clear, and impressive writer, an accurate critic, and 

 above all, a sage and impartial judge. It is almost impos 

 sible, without actual experience, to form an adequate idea 

 of the amount of labor and absorption of thought required 

 to properly conduct a journal of this character. It is es 

 sential to its success that it should appear, without fail, on 

 the day fixed for its publication, and in order to this, that a 

 supply of suitable matter must be always in preparation in 

 advance. On this account the permanent collaborators must 

 be continually urged to punctuality in completing their 

 allotted tasks, and every tendency to procrastination in all 

 connected with the enterprise persistently counteracted. 

 The proof-sheets must be critically read, and the accounts 

 of the paper-maker, the printer, and the binder, carefully 

 audited. Though some of these details may be delegated 

 to others, yet, unless the proprietor himself keeps a watch 

 ful eye" on the whole, he may soon find himself involved in 

 difficulties of a very disagreeable nature. But this is not 

 all ; nearly every article presented for publication calls for 

 a correspondence between the editor and the author; it 

 frequently happens that certain points need further eluci- 



