LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



long friend, and a few responses. Most of those addressed 

 to Guyot have been kept. In early years, Edward C. 

 Herrick was an intimate correspondent who retained the 

 letters which he received. Some of those to Agassiz are 

 preserved, and his free answers. There are a few to Sir 

 Archibald Geikie and to Professor Judd. In the library 

 of Yale University, a collection of occasional letters ad- 

 dressed to Professor Dana by his correspondents, espe- 

 cially Europeans, have been deposited; but in rare 

 instances only the letters which he addressed to them 

 have been recovered. 



In going over these materials it is apparent that Mr. 

 Dana might have been a mathematician, an anatomist, 

 an ethnologist, or an independent explorer, as well as the 

 sort of naturalist that he was, and that he had those 

 qualities which under other circumstances might possibly 

 have made him an artist, a musician, or a poet ; but, as 

 his life unfolded, he became the accurate observer and 

 patient recorder of facts, and the careful reasoner with 

 respect to the laws or system of nature. 



To this man of science, engaged in exact researches, it 

 mattered little where he began, or to what his attention 

 was directed. The study of a rock, of a crystal, of a 

 crustacean, of a zoophyte, of a coral island, of a volcano, 

 or of a continent led upward and outward to the mys- 

 teries of the universe, to the origin, the order, and the 

 purpose of the world. He was a philosopher as well as 

 an observer, capable of sound generalizations and of keen 

 attention to minute details. If any one in our day can 

 be called a cosmographer, Dana may have that title. 



No one will fail to observe that from beginning to end 

 the life of Mr. Dana is marked by a sincere and unobtru- 

 sive religious faith. His intellect assented to the doc- 

 trines and his heart to the precepts of Christianity. The 

 indications of this belief are apparent at every stage of 

 his career, 



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