72 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



ascertained experimentally that the gas escaping from the 

 water was " fixed air, with the power to extinguish flame, 

 destroy the life of breathing animals, .etc." He is found in 

 1788 recording his walking with congenial companions "in the 

 very grand procession for celebrating the adoption of the Con- 

 stitution of the United States." He began the study of law 

 with the Hon. Robert Yates, Chief Justice of the State of New 

 York, and was shortly afterward appointed one of the commis- 

 sioners to treat with the Five Nations for the cession of the 

 " Great Western District " to the State of New York, He at- 

 tended the council at Fort Stanwix, witnessed the deed, and 

 received names from the Oneidas and Onondagas. 



In 1790 Dr. Mitchill was chosen a representative from 

 Queens County in the New York Legislature. In the next 

 year he exerted himself to form the North Hempstead Li- 

 brary Association and Library. In 1792 he was appointed 

 Professor of Chemistry, Natural History, and Philosophy in 

 Columbia College, where, while dissenting from some of the 

 principles of the French chemist, he introduced, for the first 

 time in the United States, the chemical nomenclature devised 

 by Lavoisier. His dissent from Lavoisier led to a controversy 

 with Dr. Priestley, at the end of which the two disputants found 

 themselves on a footing of mutual esteem and warm personal 

 friendship. He records himself in 1794 as having exhibited at 

 full length, in a printed essay, the actual state of learning in 

 Columbia College. At about this time, too, he was co-operat- 

 ing with Chancellor Livingston and Simeon De Witt in the 

 establishment of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, 

 Manufactures, and the Useful Arts, before which he delivered 

 his first public address. Having executed a commission from 

 this society for that work, he made a detailed report, in 1796, 

 of geological and mineralogical observations on the banks of 

 the Hudson, for coal, etc. a performance which, he mentions, 

 was respectfully quoted by Count Volney. This was the first 

 work of the kind undertaken in the United States, and the re- 

 port helped to secure a wide European as well as American 

 reputation for the author. Referring to it, Dr. J. W. Francis 

 says, " He may fairly be pronounced the pioneer investigator 

 of geological science among us, preceding McClure by several 

 years." The report was published in the Medical Repository, 

 a quarterly magazine begun in 1797 by Dr. Mitchill, with Drs. 



