io8 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



will, one of these days, make a good prelude to the history of uni- 

 versity education in this country as distinguished from collegiate. 

 The term " University Extension" did not come into vogue 

 until long after the career of Silliman was ended, but many 

 years previous, in the full maturity of his powers, he gave to 

 public audiences long courses of lectures closely akin to those 

 which he was accustomed to give in college. His dignified and 

 courteous manners, fluent delivery, and well-chosen illustrations 

 sustained the reputation which had he acquired as the father of 

 American science. When his theme was chemistry, he per- 

 formed experiments in the presence of his auditors which always 

 interested and not seldom surprised them. When geology was 

 his subject, the lecture room was hung with colored pictures of 

 the flora and fauna of paleontological periods, with fiery por- 

 trayals of volcanic fires, or with quieter but not less impressive 

 views of the glaciers in Switzerland and the basaltic columns of 

 Staff a. He never "posed" as a man of superior or mysterious 

 learning, but he always spoke as an educated gentleman, eager 

 to interest and instruct his hearers. Perhaps the most brilliant 

 of these courses were those in which he inaugurated the lecture 

 system of the Lowell Institute in Boston. In the winter of 

 1839-40 he gave twenty-four lectures upon geology which were 

 so popular that every lecture was repeated. He had a similar 

 experience in the following winter, when his course in chemistry, 

 including twenty-four lectures, was given to a second audience. 

 In the next two winters, (1841-42 and 1842-43) he delivered two 

 courses on chemistry, and they also were repeated. Professor 

 J. P. Cooke, who followed Silliman many years later, declared 

 that he was led, as a boy, by these lectures to devote himself to 

 science. Hundreds of able lecturers have appeared on this fa- 

 laboratory: Sherlock J. Andrews, William P. Blake, George T. Bowen, Wil- 

 liam H. Brewer, George J. Brush, James D. Dana, Chester Dewey, Sereno E. 

 Dwight, Amos Eaton, William C. Fowler, Robert Hare, Edward Hitchcock, 

 Oliver P. Hubbard, T. Sterry Hunt, Edward H. Leffingwell, John P. Norton, 

 Denison Olmsted, Charles H. Porter, Charles H. Rockwell, Charles U. 

 Shepard, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., Benjamin D. Silliman, Mason C. Weld. 



