BENJAMIN SILLIMAN ill 



servation and research a corps of efficient laborers, and has fur- 

 nished 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 unim- 

 portant, since many of them relate to the objects 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 journal, Professor Silliman was admirably well qualified. 

 He occupied a conspicuous position in one of the oldest and most 

 respectable institutions of learning in this country; he was inti- 

 mately acquainted with the literature of science; was a fluent, 

 clear, and impressive writer, an accurate critic, and above all, a 

 sage and impartial judge." 



For an estimate of the scientific work of this remarkable man, 

 I have the pleasure of adding an appreciation by Professor A. 

 W. Dwight, P. D., at one time Professor of Molecular Physics 

 and Chemistry, and afterwards of Experimental Physics in 

 Yale University. His official and personal relation to Silliman 

 qualified him in an exceptional manner for this labor of love. 



"While it is doubtless true that Professor Silliman's reputation 

 and influence were more largely due to his remarkable skill as a 

 teacher, and to his brilliant courses of public lectures upon science, 

 the fact should not be overlooked that he showed great activity 

 as an investigator also. One of his earliest scientific publications 

 was an account of the famous meteorite which fell in Weston, 

 Conn., Dec. 14, 1807. In addition to the earlier reports of the 

 fall published by him, which aroused great interest, and were 

 widely copied, he made a chemical analysis of the meteorite, an 

 account of which was communicated to the American Philosophi- 

 cal Society, of Philadelphia, and published in its Transactions. 

 It was subsequently republished in the Memoirs of the Connecti- 

 cut Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was finally reprinted in 

 the American Journal of Science. This account, which at once 

 attracted attention in scientific circles, was deemed of such in- 

 terest and importance that it was not only republished in various 

 scientific journals, but was read aloud in the Philosophical So- 

 ciety of London, and also in the French Academy. 



