180 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



FROM PROFESSOR CONYBEARE. 



August, 1836. 



MY DEAR SIR, I have to express my thanks for several 

 kind presents in the literary way, which I have received 

 from you, in which I have not only been gratified by their 

 general interest, but equally by the expression of those 

 sentiments which every large and liberal mind must wish 

 to see prevail between countries identified in lineage, lan- 

 guage, and literature, and in all the great ends, if not in all 

 the great means, of our social institutions, of the elder 

 of which it must ever be one of the proudest boasts that 

 she is the mother of the younger, an offspring destined to 

 spread her speech and civilization over a vast continent, 

 and to give them an extent unrivalled by any other family 

 of man. 



An intercourse of the scientific and literary minds of the 

 two countries, will, I am persuaded, be among the most 

 efficient means of cementing those feelings of friendship 

 which it is so very desirable to encourage. I have, there- 

 fore, great satisfaction in forwarding to you the first num- 

 bers of a new scientific Journal, which my friends at Bristol 

 have just established. Bristol has a peculiar chain of con- 

 nection with America ; it was long the principal port where 

 an intercourse between the two countries was carried on, 

 and it is indeed our boast that Sebastian Cabot, in a vessel 

 fitted out by us, was the first discoverer of any part of the 

 Continent of North America, so that we hope you will look 

 with greater interest at our efforts to promote the cause of 

 science, in which we trust the present Journal will very 

 efficiently cooperate with our excellent Institution and very 

 valuable library previously established. In America, I be- 

 lieve you have similar advantages in most of your large 

 towns ; but in England the principle of centralization very 

 much more refers everything to our vast metropolis. Yet 

 the progress of most of our respectable provincial towns 



