August 19, 1898.] 



SGIENGE. 



203 



sustained by Connecticut and most of the 

 Eastern States ; it is not without patronage 

 beyond the Alleghenies,but the state of the 

 currency has made it necessary to relin- 

 quish an extensive subscription in those re- 

 gions. Washington, Baltimore, Charleston, 

 and the Southern States generally, but es- 

 pecially South Carolina, demand a very 

 considerable number of copies, and all the 

 smaller cities receive a proportionate sup- 

 ply." 



Already, then, the journal had assumed 

 the repi'esentative character which it still 

 holds, and the position of its editor among 

 the leaders of American science was assured. 



Besides his class-room and his journal, 

 Silliman's public lectures on scientific sub- 

 jects, delivered in many parts of the coun- 

 try, were of great value in arousing popular 

 interest. These, like his class-room lec- 

 tures, were eminently pleasing in manner 

 and brilliantly illustrated. The courses de- 

 livered in Boston in 1840-43 first inspired 

 the boy Josiah Cooke with an interest in 

 chemistry which bore fruit years afterward 

 in the sudden establishment of systematic 

 teaching of that subject at Harvard. In his 

 own college, of course, his influence was 

 direct and powerful, and it was mainly his 

 support and approval which made possible 

 the movement toward practical chemistry at 

 Yale. So preparations were made for the 

 great movement of fifty years ago. At Yale 

 the son of Professor Silliman was one of the 

 chief actors. 



Benjamin Silliman, the younger of the 

 name,was graduated from Yale in 1837 . The 

 sailing of the Wilkes exploring expedition, 

 carrying away James D. Dana as geologist, 

 left vacant at once for him a place as his 

 father's assistant, and in his father's labora- 

 tory he received the chemical training not yet 

 available in the undergraduate courses. Im- 

 pressed with the value of this practical ex- 

 perience, he began in 1842 to receive a few 

 students into his laboratory, among them 



J. P. Norton, afterward his assistant and 

 colleague. This personal and private in- 

 struction was the beginning of advanced 

 chemistry at Yale. The ' Department of 

 Philosophy and the Arts,' under the charge 

 of the younger Silliman as professor of 

 chemistry applied to the arts, and Mr. J. P. 

 Norton, fresh from two years of study at 

 Edinburgh and Utrecht, as professor of agri- 

 cultural chemistry, took possession, in 1847, 

 of the old President's House on the College 

 green. They paid rental to the College for 

 use of the building, and — such was the en- 

 couragement given in those days to the 

 teaching of science — fitted it up at their 

 own expense and served in it without sal- 

 ary. "The College, indeed," says Professor 

 Lounsbury in his ' Historical Sketch of the 

 Sheffield Scientific School, " the College, 

 indeed, had no money to give, but, even if 

 it had, it is more than dovibtful whether it 

 would have given it. No one at that time, 

 however enthusiastic, ever dreamed of the 

 supreme importance which the natural 

 sciences soon were to assume in every well- 

 devised system of education. The impres- 

 sion, indeed, seemed to prevail that chem- 

 istry, like virtue, must be its own reward." 



The School, from an educational stand- 

 point, was successful from the beginning. 

 Norton's lamented death, in 1852, opened a 

 place for J. A. Porter, a pupil of Liebig, 

 who had just resigned a similar position in 

 Brown University. Professor Porter was 

 a son-in-law of Joseph E. ShefiSeld, and to 

 this connection was due in a great measure 

 the expansion of these beginnings into the 

 Sheffield Scientific School. 



At Harvard, at about the same time, two 

 streams of influence converged to swell the 

 interest in science teaching. E. N. Hors- 

 ford was called to fill the ' Eumford Pro- 

 fessorship of the Application of Science to 

 the Useful Arts,' in Harvard University. 

 Horsford was a graduate of the Eensselaer 

 Polytechnic Institute, the earliest school in 



