Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. 225 



speaking only of my own times and for yielding to the necessity 

 of introducing some notices of my own personal history, as con- 

 nected, however humbly, with the progress of this science in the 

 United States. 



Having been educated to the profession of law, I was induced 

 by the late President Dwight of Yale College, to enter on a new 

 career, and to endeavor to qualify myself for the departments of 

 science, to which I have since been devoted, and of which I was 

 then ignorant. Two or three years of preparation in this country 

 and another year in Europe encouraged me to enter, in 1806, 

 upon a fuller discharge of the duties which I had partially com- 

 menced before going abroad. Chemistry was then my leading 

 object, and mineralogy and geology were only appendages. In 

 the latter sciences, it was then almost in vain that we sought in 

 this country for cabinets or instructors. The most common min- 

 erals were known to very few, and I accounted it a piece of rare 

 good fortune, that an introduction to the late Dr. Adam Seybert 

 of Philadelphia, then recently returned from the celebrated min- 

 eral school of Werner, at Freyberg in Germany, enabled me to 

 spread before that gentleman (Dr. Seybert) the entire cabinet of 

 Yale College, which, for the sake of having the specimens named 

 by him, I packed in a small portable box, and carried with me to 

 Philadelphia. We may now, with pride and pleasure, contrast 

 these angustiZ res of earlier days, with the ample cabinets which 

 are at present found in our institutions as well as in the hands of 

 private individuals.* Geology was at that period, (1804-5,) less 

 known among us than mineralogy. Most of the rocks were with- 

 out a name, except so far as they were quarried for economical 

 purposes, and classification of the strata was quite unknown. 



Passing over to England in the spring of 1805, and fixing my 

 residence for six months in London, I found there no school, pub- 

 lic or private, for geological instruction, and no association for the 

 cultivation of the science, which was not even named in the 

 English universities. To the deep ancient mines in the Peak of 

 Derbyshire, in central England, I had already resorted, and to 

 these explorations I added others in the still deeper mines of 

 Cornwall, famous from high antiquity for their tin, and in more 

 modern times for their copper, both obtained at profound depths, 



* That of Yale College is particularly large and fine. 

 Vol. xLiii, No. 2.— July-Sept. 1842. 29 



