358 HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY. [1836. 



equal value. It has not failed to observe and record local phe- 

 nomena and to investigate local facts ; and the usefulness and 

 value of the natural productions of the County have, in more 

 than one instance, been established by laborious scientific inves- 

 tigations. But for obvious reasons the author will forbear to 

 give any detailed account of the doings of the institution be- 

 yond such as it may be necessary to notice incidentally, here- 

 after, in relating a few historical facts. 



Since the establishment of the Delaware County Institute of 

 Science, many similar institutions have been established in vari- 

 ous counties throughout the commonwealth. But few of these 

 are prosperous ; a few maintain a nominal existence, while most 

 of them have ceased to exist. 



While it has ever been the policy of the religious Society of 

 Friends to have their children well instructed in the more useful 

 branches of learning, it was not till the year 1883 that an insti- 

 tution was established by them, specially for the instruction of 

 their youth in classical and corresponding studies. In that year, 

 members of the branch of the Society termed Orthodox^ founded 

 Haverford School. The benefits of this institution were at first 

 confined to the sons of the members of the religious Society men- 

 tioned, though that Society, as such, had no control in its manage- 

 ment. 



Connected with the school buildings, which are not large, is a 

 tract of nearly two hundred acres of land. Forty acres of this 

 land, surrounding the buildings, were appropriated to a lawn, 

 which for beauty and the variety of its trees and shrubbery, is 

 scarcely equaled in the country. The balance of the land is 

 used for farming purposes. 



Some years since, all the privileges of a college were conferred on 

 this institution; and the managers thereof agreeing to receive 

 as students others than the members of their Society, the sphere 

 of its usefulness has been greatly increased. Haverford College 

 now enjoys a high reputation as a literary and scientific institu- 

 tion, while in respect to the moral training to which the student 

 is subjected, it is unsurpassed by any college in the country. 



At the commencement of the construction of the Delaware 

 Breakwater, a large proportion of the stone used for that pur- 

 pose was taken from the quarries in this County. The superin- 

 tendent of the work, in the autumn of 1836, arrived at the 

 conclusion that the Pennsylvania stone was inferior to that from 

 the quarries in Delaware State, on account of the large propor- 

 tion of mica it contained. He thought the presence of the mica 

 rendered the Pennsylvania stone "peculiarly liable to chemical 

 decomposition," and also to a further decay from the attrition of 

 the waves. He even stated in his report, " that the experience 



