OCTOBEE 31, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



605 



Natural History, now the New York Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, made the fourth of our 

 vigorous scientific bodies. It is extremely 

 interesting to read the books of travelers 

 who visited these three cities in the early 

 decades of the last century and to note 

 their comments upon the meetings of the 

 societies mentioned and upon their collec- 

 tions and general activities. The New York 

 Lyceum of Natural History with its build- 

 ing on Broadway near Spring St. was the 

 scene of many an animated gathering. 



There is great satisfaction in noting the 

 attention to natural science which was 

 given in the early days of Kings College. 

 It was really greater than was often the 

 case. President Samuel Johnson, an ac- 

 complished classical scholar, constituted the 

 entire faculty when instruction began for 

 eight entering students, July 17, 1754. 

 The next year he was aided by his son 

 William, like himself a graduate of Yale. 

 William Johnson was a fellow or assistant 

 tutor ; but the first actual professorship was 

 that of mathematics and natural history, to 

 which in 1757 Daniel Treadwell, a gradu- 

 ate of Harvard, was called. Professor 

 Treadwell, by agreement, taught the senior 

 classes "Mathematics and Natural Phylos- 

 ophy," and the youngest class, Latin and 

 Greek. The establishment of the medical 

 school ten years later added to the staff a 

 professor of chemistry and the materia 

 medica. When the War of Independence 

 had passed and efforts were made to resume 

 instruction in 1784, the College had an 

 annual income of £1,000. A movement 

 arose to increase this amount and to estab- 

 lish seven professorships, viz., Latin, Greek, 

 moral philosophy, rhetoric and logic, mathe- 

 matics, natural philosophy and astronomy. 

 We scientific men may note with a wee bit 

 of wicked satisfaction, that it was proposed 

 to give the professors in Latin, Greek and 

 moral philosophy, £100 yearly; the pro- 



fessor of rhetoric and logic, £50 ; while the 

 three professors in the sciences were each to 

 receive, £200. During the closing decades 

 of the eighteenth century, instruction was 

 also given in geography, in botany, and, in 

 1792, a chair was established of "Natural 

 History, Agriculture and the Arts depend- 

 ent thereon." It was held by Dr. Samuel 

 L. Mitchill, one of the leading citizens of 

 the city, later member of Congress, and 

 first president of the Lyceum of Natural 

 History. 



The foundation of the School of Mines, 

 whose fiftieth anniversary we are planning 

 to celebrate next May, placed the natural 

 sciences upon the firmest foundation which 

 they had possessed up to that time; and 

 while we look back to the earlier names of 

 Mitchill, Hosack, Adrain and Torrey with 

 veneration, we feel that in the inner circle 

 of the college and the closely associated 

 enginering school, the names of Egleston, 

 Chandler, Newberry, Rood and Van Am- 

 ringe are the ones that make the strongest 

 appeal. 



The lives and works of those who have 

 gone before exert a very powerful pressure 

 upon us to maintain the traditions and to 

 pass on to our successors in undiminished 

 importance what we have received. But 

 these influences are active only upon those 

 of us who are year after year in the uni- 

 versity. They can not furnish the appeal 

 to the young men and women who come to 

 us and to other institutions for instruction. 

 It may not be inappropriate therefore to 

 also consider at the outset of the year the 

 various forces which turn them toward the 

 natural sciences and then the effect of these 

 studies upon minds and characters. It is 

 a subject in which I have long been inter- 

 ested and which I have followed up by the 

 reading of biographies, by conversations 

 with many of the older scientific men and 

 with younger workers. But all of us teach- 



