TO 



JACOB BIGELOW, M. D. 



MY DEAR SIR : 



IN inscribing this volume with your name, without having asked your 

 permission to do so, I must seek your indulgence after the act. 



There is no name which, more fitly than yours, could be thus brought 

 into connection with the subject of the volume. As the first incumbent 

 of the Rumford Professorship in Harvard College, you paid a most fe- 

 licitous and discriminating tribute, in your Inaugural Address, to the dis- 

 tinguished man who founded that Professorship by a generous endow- 

 ment, and by making the College his residuary legatee. You initiated 

 and directed a method of fulfilling the duties of your office in strict 

 accordance with the wishes and purposes of Count Rumford, especially 

 with a view to those ends of practical public good which he so ardently 

 and successfully pursued. Your published lectures, The Elements of 

 Technology, have recently had the title which you assigned to them 

 adopted by an Institution of highest promise with us in its field and 

 objects. This Institution, also, you most happily inaugurated. 



You presided for seventeen years over the American Academy of 

 Arts and Sciences with an ability and urbanity of which the Fellows 

 expressed to you their heartiest appreciation when you declined to be 

 longer a candidate for that position ; where also you had to direct the 

 administration of another generous trust confided by Count Rumford to 

 the Academy. 



Your lengthened life and professional devotion, while they have 

 brought you to stand now as the oldest and most esteemed physician in 

 the city of your residence, have likewise permitted you to indulge your 

 taste and genius in the broadest culture of the many provinces of litera- 

 ture, art, and science in which you are an authority. 



I may not put into print the epithets and encomiums attached to your 

 name by those who come nearest to you in the wide circles of your 

 friendship and personal intercourse. 



Most respectfully yours, 



GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



