ELISHA MITCHELL. 



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to keep up with the advance on every side. With all this he 

 was of conservative tendency, and not disposed to accept the 

 new too hastily. As a teacher, Prof. Phillips says, "he took 

 great pains in inculcating the first principles of science. These 

 he set forth distinctly in the very beginning of his instructions, 

 and he never let his pupils lose sight of them. When brilliant 

 and complicated phenomena were presented for their contem- 

 plation, he sought not to. excite their wonder or magnify him- 

 self in their eyes as a man of surprising acquirements, or as a 

 most dexterous manipulator, but to exhibit such instances as 

 most clearly set forth fundamental laws, and demanded the ex- 

 ercise of a skilful analysis. Naturally of a cautious disposition, 

 such had been his own experience, and so large was his ac- 

 quaintance with the experience of others, that he was not easily 

 excited when others announced unexpected discoveries among 

 the laws and the phenomena which he had been studying for 

 years as they appeared. While others were busy in prophesy- 

 ing revolutions in social or political economy, he was quietly 

 awaiting the decisions of experience. He constantly taught 

 his pupils that there were things wherein they must turn from 

 the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so sweetly. His influ- 

 ence on the developments of science was eminently conserva- 

 tive, for he loved the old landmarks." 



Prof. Mitchell's general fame rests chiefly on his work in 

 the exploration of the Black Mountain of North Carolina, a 

 spur which, standing between the main mountain ridges, had 

 been regarded by persons best acquainted with the region, 

 without knowing its exact height, as the culminating point of 

 the Appalachian system. The two Michauxes had remarked, 

 about the beginning of the century the elder in 1799, and the 

 younger in 1802 the presence of Alpine plants there that were 

 not found again south of Canada, and inferred that the peak 

 must therefore surpass all its fellows in height. John C. Cal- 

 houn had come to a similar conclusion, from the observation of 

 the streams that had their source on the mountain. Meeting 

 the Hon. David L. Swain, who was afterward President of the 

 university, in 1825, Mr. Calhoun congratulated him on being of 

 the same height with Washington and himself, and on their 

 both residing in the neighbourhood of the highest mountain on 

 the continent east of the Rocky Mountains. When asked the 

 meaning of his remark, Mr. Calhoun referred to the map as 



