26 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



boon so well described by Jordan,* Chase,f and Audubonj that 

 they need not be referred to here. The most satisfactory gauge 

 of his abilities is perhaps his masterly " Survey of the Progress 

 and Actual State of Natural Sciences in the United States of 

 America,'" printed in i8i7. His own sorrowful estimate of 

 the outcome of his mournful career is very touching : 



"I have often been discouraged, but have never despaired 

 long. I have lived to serve mankind, but have often met with 

 ungrateful returns. I have tried to enlarge the limits of knowl- 

 edge, but have often met with jealous rivals instead of friends. 

 With a greater fortune I might have imitated Humboldt or 

 Linnaeus." 



Dr. Robert Hare [b. 1781 , d. 1858] began his long career of use- 

 fulness in 1801, at the age of twenty, by the invention of the oxy- 

 hydrogen blow-pipe. This was exhibited at a meeting of the 

 Chemical Society of Philadelphia in i8oi.|| 



This apparatus was perhaps the most remarkable of his orig- 

 inal contributions to science, which he continued without inter- 

 ruption for more than fifty years. It belongs to the end of the 

 post-revolutionary period, and is therefore noticed, although it is 

 not the purpose of this essay to consider in detail the work of 

 the specialists of the present century. 



Dr. Hugh Williamson [b. Dec. 5, 1735, d., in New York, May 

 22, 1719] was a prominent but not particularly useful promoter 

 of science, a writer rather than a thinker. His work has already 

 been referred to. The names of Maclure, who came to Phila- 

 delphia about 1797, the Rev. John Heckewelder, and Albert 

 Gallatin [b. 1761, d. in 1849], a native of Switzerland, a states- 

 man and financier, subsequently identified with the scientific cir- 



* JORDAN : Bulletin xv, U. S. National Museum : Science Sketches, p. 143. 

 t CHASE : Potter's American Monthly, vi, pp. 97-101. 

 I AUDUBON : The Eccentric Naturalist <C Ornithological Biography, 

 P- 455- 



Amer. Monthly Magazine, ii, 81. 

 || Amer. Month. Mag., i, 80. 



