JOHN WINTHROP. 4! 



professorship, and the singing of a psalm, after which came a 

 dinner. 



Soon after entering upon his professorship, in 1740, Win- 

 throp observed a transit of Mercury over the sun, and sent a 

 report of his observations to the Royal Society. This paper 

 was printed in the society's Transactions, and was favoura- 

 bly mentioned in the Memoirs of the French Academy. Prof. 

 Winthrop was thanked by the society, and was asked to con- 

 tinue his communications. Winthrop was now launched upon 

 a long and useful career, during which he was held in high 

 esteem as a teacher of science at home, while his investiga- 

 tions won him much credit abroad. There is sufficient evi- 

 dence as to his success as an instructor to justify the words of 

 President Quincy, who, in his History of Harvard University, 

 says of Winthrop : " The zeal, activity, and talent with which 

 he applied himself to the advancement of these sciences [i. e., 

 physics and astronomy] justified the expectations which his 

 early promise had raised. As a lecturer he was skilful and 

 attractive, and during forty years he fulfilled the duties of the 

 professor's chair to universal acceptance." Many of his papers 

 on astronomical subjects are to be found in the volumes issued 

 by the Royal Society during his lifetime, among these being 

 an essay on comets, in Latin, entitled Cogitate de Cometis, 

 which he transmitted to the society in 1765, on the occasion of 

 his becoming a member of that body. 



On November 18, 1755, an earthquake occurred which terri- 

 fied the superstitious people of all New England, who regarded 

 it as a Direct expression of the wrath of God. To calm the 

 popular terror, Prof. Winthrop read a public lecture on the 

 earthquake in the college chapel. He accounted for such dis- 

 turbances as being produced by the expansive action of heat 

 upon vapours contained in underground cavities, and argued 

 ably in support of this theory. He also stated that earth- 

 quakes had occurred at intervals in New England from the 

 time the first settlers landed, but that not a single life had 

 ever been lost, nor had any great damage ever been done by 

 them. In conclusion, he maintained that earthquakes are 

 "neither objections against the order of Providence nor 

 tokens of God's displeasure, according to the views of skep- 

 tical or superstitious minds, but that they are the necessary 

 consequences of general laws." This lecture was published by 

 4 



