234 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



to England. A number of Italians bearing the name of Dana 

 have had honorable careers in various intellectual professions. 

 The intense vivacity of mind and body which always characterized 

 Professor Dana may have been due in some degree to his inherit- 

 ance from the sunny land of Italy. 



The parents of James Dwight Dana were intelligent, energetic, 

 and earnestly religious people, and the atmosphere of the home 

 swas thoroughly wholesome. " Honesty, virtue and industry seem 

 jdmost to be our natural inheritance," said Professor Dana in 

 after years, in grateful memory of the influences under which he 

 and his nine brothers and sisters had been reared. There is, 

 however, no evidence that the associations of his childhood home 

 tended to inspire or cultivate an interest in scientific investiga- 

 tion. One of his aunts, who was a member of the household in 

 which his boyhood was passed, describes him as "a merry boy, 

 always ready for a game of romps." She informs us that he 

 began collecting specimens at an early age, and that "he had quite 

 a cabinet before he was ten years old." How much significance 

 belongs to these early efforts, it is impossible to estimate. 



The earliest influence tending to awaken into activity his scien- 

 tific taste and talent was found in an academy which had been 

 established in Utica by Charles Bartlett. The science teacher in 

 that school, Fay Edgerton, was a graduate of Rensselaer Poly- 

 technic Institute, and was far in advance of his time in his methods 

 of scientific instruction. His students were taught in large degree 

 by laboratory methods. Especially instructive and inspiring 

 were his short field excursions in term time, and his longer tours 

 with his students in the summer vacations, in which they collected 

 minerals, fossils, plants, etc., and acquired the mental habitudes 

 which come from first-hand contact with nature. Mr. Edgerton 

 was succeeded in his position by Asa Gray, the illustrious botanist. 

 It does not appear, however, that Dana was ever a pupil of Gray, 1 



1 According to M. M. Bagg (quoted by Oilman, p. 16), Gray commenced 

 teaching in Utica in 1829; but a letter of Gray to Torrey (Letters of Asa 

 Cray, p. 37) shows that Gray's work in Utica did not begin till 1832. This 

 was after Dana had entered college. 



