g6 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



Priestley, then living at Northumberland, and not infrequently 

 seen at the hospitable table of Dr. Wistar. 



In his transits from New York to Philadelphia, Silliman 

 often stopped in Princeton where he found an inspiring friend in 

 Dr. Maclean whom he speaks of as his earliest master in Chemis- 

 try. Although he did not have the opportunity to attend any 

 lectures there, he calls Princeton his "first starting-point" in 

 that science. The young chemist spent a second winter in 

 Philadelphia when he continued to be intimate with Robert 

 Hare, and in the spring returned to New Haven and began to 

 write his lectures. Among the instructions from President 

 Dwight, which Silliman received in Philadelphia was one request- 

 ing him to pay some attention, if possible, before his return, to 

 "the analyzing of stones." "The President has received some 

 of the basalts from the Giant's Causeway, and supposes that 

 there is a stone in the neighborhood of this town of a similar 

 nature; he wishes to ascertain the fact." 



In the following summer he delivered his first course of 

 lectures upon Chemistry. He had prepared them with a great 

 deal of care, and he afterwards pointed with pride to the names 

 of distinguished men who were members of the class, John 

 C. Calhoun, Bishop Gadsden, John Pierpont, the poet, and many 

 others. During his absence a subterranean lecture room had 

 been fitted up for his laboratory, but so inconvenient was it, that 

 the young chemist was obliged to get several members of the 

 corporation into the gloomy cavern, fifteen or sixteen feet below 

 the surface of the ground, before they could be persuaded to 

 improve this faulty situation. In this deep-seated laboratory, 

 Silliman worked during fifteen of the best years of his life and 

 he has left particular accounts of the simple apparatus which 

 he possessed. He was much encouraged by a remark of the 

 great Dr. Priestley, namely, 



"that with Florence flasks (cleaned by sand and ashes) and plenty 

 of glass tubes, vials, bottles, and corks, a tapering iron rod to be 

 heated and used as a cork borer, and a few live coals with which 

 to bend the tubes, a good variety of apparatus might be fitted up. 



