HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF INSTITUTE. PIERS. 1111 



A BRIEF HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE NOVA SCOTIAN 

 INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE, AND THE EVENTS LEADING UP TO 

 ITS FORMATION; WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ITS 

 DECEASED PRESIDENTS AND OTHER PROMINENT MEMBERS. 

 BY HARRY PIERS, Curator of the Provincial Museum, 

 Halifax. 



(Read at Commemoration Meeting, 20th January, 1913.) 



PIONEER NATURALISTS. 



No backward glance at the progress of scientific affairs 

 in Nova Scotia would be at all complete without some refer- 

 ence to the pioneer workers in the field, the men who collected 

 and observed, and thought and wrote, or otherwise laboured 

 without the inspiring presence in their midst of institutions 

 of learning and research, and companions of similar tastes. 



The names we meet in this period are not many; but, 

 ipso facto, something akin to a halo must surround them 

 because these men were the Fathers of Science in this 

 province. 



Passing by the early voyagers and settlers, whose occasional 

 hap-hazard observations on natural history are mostly 

 of mere historic interest, we find that the close study of that 

 subject seems to have begun about 1800 with Titus Smith, 

 a man who was remarkable in many ways. He was followed 

 by MacCulloch, Gesner, Webster, Brown and others, of 

 whom I will give a few particulars. 



TITUS SMITH, botanist, etc., was born at Granby, Mass., 

 4th September, 1768, and died at the Dutch Village, near 

 Halifax, 4th January, 1850. He came to Nova Scotia with 

 his father, a Yale graduate, in 1785, and settled at Preston, 

 near Dartmouth, removing to the Dutch Village about 1800. 

 He was remarkably well read and most accurate in his know- 

 ledge of many subjects, and became well known to all of his 

 day as "The Dutch Village Philosopher.''' He was a most 



