AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 41 



name. Very early Asa Gray was one of these as occa- 

 sional notes are signed by his initials. Dr. Levi Ives of 

 New Haven was another. Prof. J. Griscom of Paris also 

 sent numerous contributions even as early as 1825 (see 

 9, 154, 1825; 22, 192, 1832; 24, 342, 1833, and others). 



Some statements have already been quoted from the 

 early volumes as to the business part of Silliman's enter- 

 prise. The subject is taken up more fully in the preface 

 to volume 50 (1847). No one can fail to marvel at the 

 energy and optimism required to push the Journal for- 

 ward when conditions must have been so difficult and 

 encouragement so scanty. He says (pp. iii, iv) : 



This Journal first appeared in July, 1818, and in June, 1819, 

 the first volume of four numbers and 448 pages was completed. 

 This scale of publication, originally deemed sufficient, was found 

 inadequate to receive all the communications, and as the receipts 

 proved insufficient to sustain the expenses, the work, having but 

 three hundred and fifty subscribers, was, at the end of the year, 

 abandoned by the publishers. 



An unprofitable enterprise not being attractive to the trade, 

 ten months elapsed before another arrangement could be carried 

 into effect, and, therefore, No. 1 of vol. 2 was not published until 

 April, 1820. The new arrangement was one of mutual responsi- 

 bility for the expenses, but the Editor was constrained neverthe- 

 less to pledge his own personal credit to obtain from a bank the 

 funds necessary to begin again, and from this responsibility he 

 was, for a series of years, seldom released. The single volume 

 per annum being found insufficient for the communications, 

 two volumes a year were afterward published, commencing with 

 the second volume. 



The publishers whose names appear on the title page 

 of the four numbers of the first volume are ' ; J. Eastburn 

 & Co., Literary Rooms, Broadway, New York" and Howe 

 & Spalding, New Haven." For the second volume and 

 those immediately following the corresponding state- 

 ment "printed and published by S. Converse [New 

 Haven] for the Editor." 



Silliman adds (p. iv) : 



At the conclusion of vol. 10, in February, 1826, the work was 

 again left upon the hands of its Editor ; all its receipts had been 

 absorbed by the expenses, and it became necessary now to pay 

 a heavy sum to the retiring publisher, as an equivalent for his 



