DEBUT AS A NATURALIST 333 
Missouri River Expedition in 1843. Edward Harris 
became a patron of science through his friendship with 
scientific men, and many besides Audubon were indebted 
to him for judicious advice as well as more substantial 
benefits. 
The Academy of Natural Sciences, founded in 1812, 
was well established at this time, and its rapidly grow- 
ing Museum was already the largest and most valuable 
in the New World; ornithology was a favored subject, 
and the Academy’s roll embraced every American pio- 
neer worker of note in the entire field of the natural 
sciences. The following account of a meeting of the 
Academy, held on October 11, 1825, when Ord presided, 
has been preserved in a letter of the period: *° 
A few evenings since I was associated with a society of gen- 
tlemen, members of the Academy of Natural Sciences. There 
were present fifteen or twenty. Among the number were Le 
Sueur, Rafinesque, Say, Peale, Pattison, Harlan, and Charles 
Lucien Bonaparte. 
Among this collection life was most strikingly exemplified : 
Le Sueur, with a countenance weather-beaten and worn, looked 
on, for the muscles of his ironbound visage seemed as incapable 
of motion, as those on the medals struck in the age of Julius 
Cesar. Rafinesque has a fine black eye, rather bald and black 
hair, and withal is rather corpulent. I was informed that he 
was a native of Constantinople; at present he lives in Ken- 
tucky. Dr. Harlan is a spruce young man... . Peale is 
the son of the original proprietor of the Philadelphia Museum, 
and one who visited the Rocky Mountains with Major Long; 
he is a young man, and has no remarkable indications of 
countenance to distinguish him. Say, who was his companion 
20 Written by Dr. Edmund Porter of Frenchtown, New Jersey, to 
Dr. Thomas Miner of Haddam, Connecticut, on October 25, 1825. See 
Witmer Stone, “Some Philadelphia Ornithological Collections and Col- 
lectors, 1784-1850,” The Auk, vol. xvi (New York, 1899). 
