258 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



my that kept such liberal schemes from being carried out the 

 country and the universities had not grown up to them, and the 

 needed abundance of money had not yet come but this was 

 one of the incidents that kept the movement vital and sped it 

 on. Prof. Olmsted also conceived a plan for the establishment 

 of an observatory at Yale College, which should have two de- 

 partments : one to aid in the instruction of students and the 

 other for the use of scientific observers ; but the time had not 

 yet come for this. As another incident of his astronomical 

 work, President Woolsey relates that " for a number of years, 

 until his health forbade it and his eyesight began to fail, he 

 was accustomed to gather his class around him on a bright au- 

 tumn evening and introduce them to the heavenly bodies. In 

 this way he endeavoured to train up a corps of practical ob- 

 servers, whose labours, when they should be scattered abroad 

 in this vast country, should not be lost to science." 



In purely practical lines of enterprise he invented an excel- 

 lent stove which bore his name, and the patent for which 

 brought him considerable profit ; and he devised a preparation 

 of lead and rosin for lubricating machinery. 



Of his qualities as a teacher Prof. Silliman mentions espe- 

 cially his uniform kindness and courtesy of demeanour and pa- 

 tience in imparting instruction ; the excellent moral influence 

 he always exerted, his consistent Christian example, his per- 

 sonal counsels, the genuine friendliness of his disposition, and 

 the unaffected interest he always manifested in the welfare of 

 his pupils. He was ever ready to encourage and assist any 

 who exhibited special fondness for the studies of his depart- 

 ment, and it always gave him pleasure when students passed 

 beyond the bounds of ordinary attainment. 



He laboured to make knowledge more accessible to the 

 people, and science comprehensible and interesting to them. 

 Dr. Barnard, who describes him from the point of view of a 

 teacher, says that he " availed himself at all times of the lyceum 

 and the popular lecture, as well as of the daily press, to apply 

 the principles of science to the explanation of extraordinary 

 phenomena of meteorology and astronomy, as well as to the 

 advancement of domestic comfort and popular improvement 

 generally. In an essay read before the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Education, at New York, in 1835, he 

 showed, in a felicitous manner, that the whole tendency and 



