THOMAS SAY. 



217 



scientific bodies of the world, a place which it has since 

 occupied. 



Long before entering the academy, Say had acquired a 

 familiarity with the forms of beetles and butterflies, but without 

 reducing his knowledge to systematic order. Now, on joining 

 a scientific society, he began those investigations on the Amer- 

 ican fauna which only ceased with his death. In the second 

 year of his membership he gave a series of original lectures on 

 the elements of entomology. His partner, Speakman, fully 

 sympathized with his passion for Nature, and willingly did the 

 labour of both in the shop, so that Say might devote all his time 

 and energies to his favourite studies. However, this com- 

 fortable arrangement did not last long. 



" Through indorsement for unfortunate friends," says Dr. 

 Ruschenberger, in his Notice of the Academy of Natural Sci- 

 ences, " the firm and business of Speakman & Say were at an 

 end ; and it is related of these servants of science that they 

 retained scarcely anything for themselves ; and that Mr. Say 

 gave to those to whom they had become debtors by indorse- 

 ment the contents of his pocketbook and even the loose 

 change in his purse. After this he resided in the hall of the 

 academy, where he made his bed under the skeleton of a horse, 

 and fed himself on bread and milk ; occasionally he cooked a 

 chop or boiled an egg; but he was wont to regard eating as an 

 inconvenient interruption to scientific pursuits, and often ex- 

 pressed a wish that he had been made with a hole in his side in 

 which he might deposit, from time to time, the quantity of 

 food requisite for his nourishment. He lived in this manner 

 several years, during which time his food did not cost, on 

 an average, more than twelve cents a day." Had he, like 

 Thoreau, given an account of his life at this time, it would 

 have been a highly interesting chapter. 



In 1816 he projected a work on American entomology, and 

 in the next year six plates and the accompanying text were 

 printed, but, from a lack of proper pecuniary support, the 

 project for the time fell through, and the work was not prop- 

 erly published until a later date. In 1817 William Maclure 

 was elected president of the academy. Through his efforts and 

 those of several other men of influence and property who had 

 joined the society, the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sci- 

 ences of Philadelphia was started, and Say began his long 

 15 



