LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



I have the right kind of ability to succeed in it. A long 

 apprenticeship I should have to undergo, which would be 

 perhaps a prelude to continual poverty. The future 

 would appear to me exceedingly dark were I to under- 

 take it. Moreover, I should have to change the whole 

 disposition of my mind, my firmly settled tastes must be 

 rooted out and thrown away; indeed it appears to me 

 that it would be working against nature, against the 

 natural bent of my mind, and would not be unlike at- 

 tempting to make a fish live out of water. 



" Medicine is not so much opposed to my tastes. It 

 investigates the anatomy of the human system, and the 

 nature and use of its various organs, etc., particulars 

 which belong in some degree to natural history. In- 

 deed it appears to be closely allied to the natural sciences. 

 Yet I hardly think I should like the practice, it is so 

 laborious, and in many instances so disgusting, as it 

 makes known all the misery and wretchedness in the 

 world, of which it seems to me we see enough without 

 hunting for it. Yet I think I should be disposed to take 

 it up should I desert natural history. And what had I 

 better do ? Give it up or not ? I have had some thoughts 

 of spending the next year here, and of going into the 

 laboratory, and spending the same time there that I 

 would were I Professor Silliman's assistant. He has 

 given me the permission." 



Presently there came the long-desired invitation from 

 Professor Silliman to become his assistant in the chemi-- 

 cal laboratory at New Haven, a post which had before 

 been held by bright young men with scientific proclivi- 

 ties, Sherlock J. Andrews, Benjamin D. Silliman, Burr 

 Noyes, Charles U. Shepard, and Oliver P. Hubbard. 

 Amos Eaton, too, had been a student there. This call 

 was probably the turning-point in Dana's career. It came 

 just at the right moment, for it established his home 

 among men of kindred tastes, among opportunities which 

 were the best that the country then afforded for the pros- 

 ecution of science. Dana expressed to Professor Silli- 

 man the opinion that there was no other city in the 

 country so pleasant for study as New Haven. ' The 



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