SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL. 



75 



fish. "He was the delight," says this biographer, "of a meet- 

 ing of naturalists. The seed he sowed gave origin and growth 

 to a mighty crop of those disciples of natural science. He was 

 emphatically our great living ichthyologist. The fishermen 

 and fishmongers were perpetually bringing him new specimens. 

 They adopted his name for our excellent fish, the striped bass, 

 and designated it the Perca Mitchilli" 



He writes concerning a conversation he had with Captain 

 Lewis, the explorer, about the burning plains up the Missouri, 

 where the burning strata of coal underlying the plains pro- 

 duced such intense heat as to form lava, slag, and, pumice- 

 stone by the same process that forms those volcanic sub- 

 stances in the burning mountains of other countries. Decem- 

 ber 30, 1807, he congratulates his wife on the account in one 

 of her letters of the meteoric stones that fell to the earth in 

 Connecticut, which arrived at a most convenient time, having 

 preceded all the letters to the Connecticut delegation, and 

 even outrun the newspapers. Dr. Mitchill also during this 

 period visited Upper Canada, and described the mineralogy of 

 Niagara Falls ; wrote a history of West Point and the Military 

 Academy ; and visited Harper's Ferry and described the 

 geology and scenery of that spot, which had been eulogized 

 for its sublimity by Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia. Dr. 

 Mitchill retired from his professorship in Columbia College 

 on his election to Congress, in 1801. In 1807, when the Col- 

 lege of Physicians and Surgeons of the City of New York was 

 organized, he was chosen its first Professor of Chemistry, but 

 declined the position, preferring his public duties. In 1808, 

 however, he accepted a professorship of Natural History ; and 

 in 1820, on the reorganization of the faculty, became Professor 

 of Botany and Materia Medica. Difficulties occurred with the 

 Board of Trustees in 1828, and the whole faculty of the college 

 resigned. Among other works for the advancement of science 

 and learning mentioned in his record are his action with Drs. 

 Hosack and Hugh Williamson in laying the foundation of a 

 Literary and Philosophical Society in New York, in 1815 ; the 

 reading to the society of a narrative of the earthquakes of the 

 United States and in foreign parts, during 1811, 1812, and 

 1813; co-operation in a petition to the Common Council of 

 New York for the grant of the building in the North Park for 

 the purposes of Literature, Science, and Arts ; the delivery, in 



