SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL. 79 



deep." Dr. Francis is also authority for tfre story that when 

 the purchase of the Elgin Botanic Garden by the constituted 

 authorities was argued at the Capitol, " he won the attention 

 of the members by a speech of several hours' length, in which 

 he gave a history of gardens and the necessity for them. . . . 

 With his botanical Latinity occasionally interspersed, he prob- 

 ably appeared more learned than ever. Van Horn, a Western 

 member, was dumfounded at the Linnsean phraseology, and 

 declared such knowledge to be too deep for human powers to 

 fathom." 



As described by Dr. Francis, Dr. Mitchill's appearance be- 

 fore his class in the instruction room was that of an earnest 

 instructor, ready to impart the stores of his accumulated wis- 

 dom for the benefit of his pupils, while his oral disquisitions 

 were perpetually enlivened with novel and ingenious observa- 

 tions. Chemistry, which first engaged his capacious mind, was 

 rendered the more captivating by his endeavours to improve 

 the nomenclature of the French savants, and to render the 

 science subservient to the useful purposes of agriculture, art, 

 and hygiene. In treating of the materia medica, he delighted to 

 dwell on the riches of our native products for the art of heal- 

 ing, and he sustained an enormous correspondence throughout 

 the land, in order to add to his own practical observations the 

 experience of the competent, the better to prefer the claims of 

 our indigenous products. 



Many of Dr. MitchiU's scientific papers were published in 

 the London Philosophical Magazine, New York Medical Re- 

 pository, American Medical and Philosophical Register, New 

 York Medical and Physical Journal, American Mineralogical 

 Journal, and Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Phil- 

 adelphia ; and he supplied several other periodicals, both abroad 

 and at home, with the results of his cogitations. 



Dr. Mitchill was the author of a few verses, and of prose 

 essays or addresses of an order of humorous trifling, much 

 affected at the time, of which the lighter works of Irving and 

 Paulding furnish the most conspicuous examples, and with 

 which Halleck's verses are in sympathy. One of his favourite 

 topics was a proposition to give a new name Fredon or Fre- 

 donia to the United States, after which the people should be 

 called Fredes or Fredonians, and their relations Fredish or Fre- 

 donian. The subject was taken up and discussed in the 



