DENISON OLMSTED. 253 



as it appeared to him, was that " no sooner would the supe- 

 rior order of schoolmasters commence their labours, than the 

 schools themselves would begin to furnish teachers of a higher 

 order. The schoolmasters previously employed were for the 

 most part such as had received all their education at the com- 

 mon schools, and could only perpetuate the meagre system of 

 beggarly elements which they had learned ; but it was obvious 

 that schools trained in a more extended course of studies 

 would produce teachers of a corresponding character that is, 

 if we could once start the machine, it would go on by its own 

 momentum." He was contemplating a series of newspaper 

 articles in advocacy of his plan, and communications concern- 

 ing it with eminent men interested in education, when he was 

 called to another enterprise. The idea of normal schools was 

 afterward taken up by other men and brought by them before 

 the public under much more favourable circumstances than he 

 could have commanded had he remained in Connecticut and 

 continued his advocacy at that time. 



At a later time, as a member of the Board of Commission- 

 ers of Common Schools for Connecticut, in 1840, in drafting 

 the annual report, he observed that " wherever normal schools 

 have been established and are adequately sustained, the experi- 

 ment has uniformly resulted in supplying teachers of a superior 

 order. As in every other art whose principles are reduced to 

 rule and matured into a system, the learner is not limited to 

 the slow and scanty results of his single unaided experience, 

 but is at once invested with the accumulated treasures of all 

 who have laboured in the same before him." 



Preparatory to going to his professorship in North Carolina, 

 Mr. Olmsted engaged in private studies in geology with Prof. 

 Silliman. He found at his new post two of his old friends, 

 Yale men like himself, occupying professorial chairs : Elisha 

 Mitchell, his former classmate, that of Mathematics and Natu- 

 ral Philosophy, and Ethan A. Andrews that of Languages, and 

 here he spent seven happy years. 



In 1821 he laid before the Board of Internal Improvements 

 of North Carolina a proposition to undertake a geological sur- 

 vey of the State, offering to perform the entire work himself 

 gratuitously, but suggesting an appropriation of one hundred 

 dollars to defray his necessary expenses in travelling, to be 

 afterward renewed or not at the pleasure of the board. The 



