bes 
ences of Philadelphia has appointed a member of their body to de- 
liver a discourse in commemoration of their venerable and respected 
President and benefactor; to whom, “as the pioneer of American 
geology, the whole country owes a debt of gratitude, and in his 
death will acknowledge the loss of one of the most efficient friends 
of science and the arts ;” and who, “asthe patron of men of science, 
even more than for his personal researches, deserves the lasting re- 
gard of mankind*.” 
Mr. William Maclure died, 23rd March 1840, at San Angel, near 
the city of Mexico, where, during some years, his declining health 
had obliged him to seek a more genial climate than the United States, 
and he has left a large property to the Academy of Natural Sciences 
at Philadelphia, of which he was Presidentt. 
Professor BLUMENBACH died at Gottingen on the 22nd of Ja- 
nuary 1840, in the 89th year of his age: he was born at Gotha, May 
11, 1752, and early imbued with a taste for natural history and me- 
dicine by his father, a native of Leipsic, who died in 1787, in the 
office of Pro-rector and Professor in the Gymnasium at Gotha. At 
the age of 17, a.p. 1769, he began his academical career at Jena 
by the study of literature under Baldinger, and of natural history 
and archeology under his relative Professor Walch, and three years 
after proceeded to Gottingen to complete his studies, where he im- 
mediately became intimate with Heyne, Professor Bittner, and Mi- 
chaelis, whose son was then a fellow-student in medicine. The rich 
collection of voyages and travels to which he had access in the li- 
brary of Professor Walch, suggestéd to him, as the subject of his 
exercise for his Degree of Doctor, a dissertation on the native va- 
rieties of the human race, which became the first germ of his future 
extensive researches in Anthropology, in which he derives the three 
great varieties of the human family from a primary stem of the 
Caucasian race. His first public employment was a gratuitous 
undertaking to arrange the cabinet of natural history which the 
University. had purchased from Professor Bittner, which soon 
brought him favourably to the notice of the minister and curator 
of the University. In 1775 he was appointed a Private Teacher 
in Natural History; in the following year an Extraordinary Pro- 
fessor, and in 1778 an Ordinary Professor of Medicine and Natural 
History in the University of Gottingen. 
In 1784 he became a Member of the Royal Society of Géttin- 
gen; in 1788, a Counsellor; and in 1812, perpetual Secretary of the 
Class of Physics and Mathematics in the same Society. In 1816 
he was appointed a Member of the Superior Council of Medicine, 
and in 1821, a Commander of the Guelphic Order. His talent as 
a lecturer, and profound knowledge of medicine, anatomy and na- 
tural history, soon made Gottingen a centre of attraction to the 
students of all Germany; nor did this attraction cease during a 
_ * Silliman’s Journal, vol. xxxix. July 1840, p. 212. 
+ Besides the works above mentioned he published an “ Essay on the 
Formation of Rocks,”’ and a work in three volumes, entitled ‘‘ Maclure’s 
Opinions.” 
VOL. Ill. PART Il. SES 
