56 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



though some writers had mistakenly affirmed this, but that 

 assistance was small. Dr. Rush asserted, in the eulogy he 

 pronounced upon him, that the eminence he attained was to 

 be ascribed " chiefly to his having escaped the pernicious in- 

 fluence of monkish learning upon his mind in early life " ; 

 otherwise, " instead of revolving through life in a planetary 

 orbit," he might have spent his time " in composing syllogisms, 

 or in measuring the feet of Greek and Latin poetry." He 

 understood the German and Low Dutch languages, acquired a 

 reading knowledge of French, and " overcame in a great degree 

 the difficulties of the Latin tongue." He was a firm believer 

 in the Christian religion, though he was not attached to any 

 church. That speculative disquisitions were of little interest 

 to him is shown by his remark concerning a conversation with 

 a clerical gentleman, that it was " not, perhaps, greatly to the 

 satisfaction of either of us ; for he appears to be a mystical 

 philosopher, and I, you know, care not a farthing for anything 

 but sober certainty in philosophy." He published but little, 

 because, as his biographer believes, he was too busy with work 

 to give his time to the composition of formal papers. The 

 list of his contributions to the American Philosophical Society 

 includes twenty-two titles of papers relating to his orrery ; 

 the transits of Venus and Mercury; the comet of 1770; a 

 method of deducing the true time of the sun's passing the 

 meridian ; the difference of longitude between the observa- 

 tions of Norriton and Philadelphia; an explanation of an op- 

 tical deception ; experiments on magnetism ; a remarkable me- 

 teor seen in 1779; a comet observed in 1784; a new method 

 of placing the meridian mark ; an optical problem ; astro- 

 nomical observations (on the Georgium Sidus and a transit 

 of Mercury) ; an account of several houses struck with light- 

 ning; another account of the effects of a stroke of lightning; 

 several astronomical observations described in a single 

 paper; a mathematical problem ; a comet observed in 1793; 

 the improvement of time-keepers; the expansion of wood 

 by heat ; a problem in logarithms ; and the mode of de- 

 termining the true place of a planet in an elliptical orbit 

 his last paper, read February 5, 1796. To these is add- 

 ed his oration on " Astronomy," delivered before the 

 American Philosophical Society, on the 24th of February, 

 1775, and inscribed "To the delegates of the thirteen 



