PREFACE. XV 
names, for the cultivation of natural history, have been instituted 
‘in very many of our cities and towns, and several of them have 
been active and efficient in making original observations and 
forming collections. 'The American Philosophical Society at 
Philadelphia, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Bos- 
ton, and the Academy of Natural Sciences also at Philadelphia, 
numbered distinguished names among their members, and had 
published valuable volumes of 'Transactions before our publication 
began. The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences had also 
published a single volume as early as 1813. Since that time the 
Lyceum of Natural History of New York, the Boston Society 
of Natural History, the Albany Institute, and the Maryland Acad- 
emy of Sciences have stood prominent among associations of a 
like nature, and their memoirs now constitute an important item 
in our scientific history. Other associations for the departments 
of history and ethnography have also published memoirs ; and we 
must not omit to mention the American Geological Society, and 
the Geological Society of Pennsylvania, which has issued one 
valuable volume. 
Of scientific collections we may say, that in the Institution 
from which we date these remarks, going back only fourteen 
years from the issuing of our first number, the entire mineral- 
ogical and geological collection of the college was transported to 
Philadelphia in one small box, and there, for lack of information 
elsewhere, the specimens were named by the late Dr. Adam 
Seybert, then fresh from the celebrated school of Werner at 
Freiburg in Germany, perhaps the only man then in this country 
who could be regarded asa mineralogist scientifically trained. 
Now, mineralogy and geology are familiar to our legislators and 
our youth; and the institution which sent forth its little box of 
unknown mineral treasures, unfolds to its pupils and the world 
a magnificent collection not surpassed, if equalled, in the United 
States. 
Boston, which at our earliest date presented only the limited 
collection of the Linnean Society, now opens to the student 
a rich and beautiful museum of natural history; and Harvard 
University at Cambridge has a fine botanical garden under an able 
and zealous botanist—a well furnished and successful observatory, 
