76 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



connection with a curious case by which the town was stirred, 

 of a public lecture on the Somnium, or dream, as a state dif- 

 ferent both from wakefulness and sleep ; an excursion with 

 friends to the region watered by the Wallkill, where the party 

 disinterred a mammoth ; participation in an excursion to the 

 Neversink Hills, near Sandy Hook,-where a dangerous mistake 

 in their altitude, which had been supposed to be six hundred 

 feet, was corrected, and the real height was found to be only 

 half as great, or three hundred feet ; acting as vice-president 

 of the District Convention which met at Philadelphia for pre- 

 paring a National Pharmacopoeia ; and co-operation with Sam- 

 uel Wood and Garrett K. Lawrence in recommending the 

 willow-leaved meadow-sweet (Spircea salicifolid) " as an admi- 

 rable article for refreshment and health, and as a substitute 

 for the tea of China." A description and classification of one 

 hundred and sixty-six species of fish, chiefly found in the fresh 

 and salt waters adjacent to the city of New York, which he 

 offered to the Literary and Philosophical Society at one of its 

 earlier meetings, was the nucleus of what is regarded as his 

 chief work. He mentions in his record more than forty addi- 

 tional species described in Bigelow and Holly's Magazine, and 

 several more in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences of 

 Philadelphia. An elaborate History of the Botanical Writers 

 of America by him is to be found in the collections of the 

 New York Historical Society. Of his literary and scientific 

 work as a whole, in fact, it is well said in the Cyclopaedia of 

 American Literature that numerous papers by him are included 

 in the Transactions of the many learned societies of Europe 

 and America of which he was a member ; and he was often 

 called upon, at the anniversaries of the societies of his own 

 city, to appear as their orator. " His multifarious productions 

 are consequently scattered over a number of publications and 

 collections of pamphlets, and are somewhat overshadowed by 

 the reputation of the learned bodies with which they are con- 

 nected. They have fallen, to some extent, into an unmerited 

 oblivion." He had committed his manuscripts to his brother- 

 in-law, the late Dr. Samuel Akerly, as the friend most compe- 

 tent to write his biography, and the work was begun, when 

 the papers were destroyed by the burning of the house in 

 which they were deposited. Had Dr. Akerly not been thus 

 prevented from completing this work, and had he been able to 



