602 THE JOURNAL OFRNGEOLOGY. 
whose enthusiasm for natural history tempered by a thorough 
English culture and education, stirred in him the appetite for 
investigation and the reverence for the truth, which never left 
him, but grew with his growth and became the dominating 
qualities of his character. 
Having determined to devote his life to the study and inter- 
pretation of nature he chose the most direct ways of fitting him- 
self for the work. He felt the importance of a liberal college 
education, and entered the Class of 1833 in Yale college, where 
Silliman was making himself and the college famous for the 
teaching and encouragement of science. With Silliman he 
became a devoted pupil of mineralogy, chemistry and geology, 
but particularly of the first. Silliman’s public lecturing began 
while Dana was in college, and the course of lectures in Hart- 
ford in 1834, and the Lowell lectures in Boston in 1835, were the 
beginning of awakening of the public interest in science through- 
out America. 
Comparing him with others, the influence of this liberal 
education is seen throughout his writings, in the remarkably phil- 
osophical grasp, in the deep insight with which every subject of 
his investigation was handled, and in the breadth of his interests 
and his thorough appreciation of the true proportions and rela- 
tions of things to each other. 
He also had the extraordinary advantages of wide travel, 
which particularly fitted him to be an interpreter of the grander 
problems of geology, to which in the latter half of his life he gave 
chief attention. Immediately after graduation he took a cruise 
on the U.S. Frigates ‘‘Delaware”’ and ‘United States,” across 
the Atlantic and about the Mediterranean, in the capacity of 
teacher of mathematics to the midshipmen, but learning and 
observing meanwhile, studying mineralogy and crystallography 
inside his cabin, and seeing whatever he could see on sea and 
jand outside. His first scientific paper was written from the 
U2 >: Private “United States), ingnsea.. On the iconditionmer 
Vesuvius in July 1834.” 
*See American Journ. Sci. (1) Vol. XXVIL., pp. 281-288. 
