12 



Annual Address. 



bear witness to his early and valuable observations on the 

 rotation of crops, on the variations of the magnetic needle, 

 on the annular eclipse of 1806, on the comparative climates 

 of different parts of the United States, on the establish- 

 ment of a meridian line in the Albany academy park, and 

 on other subjects of scientific importance. Meteorology 

 was always a subject to him of great interest, and he com- 

 menced a course of observations upon it as early as 1795, 

 and it was mainly through his exertions and influence in 

 the board of regents, that a regular system of observations 

 was authorized to be made at the several academies in this 

 state, and thus prepared the way for the system which has 

 been since developed and extended over the whole United 

 States, and is now producing such interesting and valuable 

 results. 



He was a man of remarkable purity and simplicity of 

 life, deeply religious, fixed in his principles, and firm and 

 consistent in his conduct. I have been told by one who 

 was long and intimately associated with him, that such 

 was the traditional confidence of the Indian tribes in his 

 fairness and good faith, that in all treaties or arrangements 

 between them and the state, they always preferred to make 

 the negotiation through him. I well remember being 

 taken when a boy, to one of the meetings of the old 

 society in its rooms in the upper part of the present Capi- 

 tol. Near the entrance of the room was the library, small 

 in the number of its volumes, but valuable as containing 

 full sets of the transactions and reports of some of the 

 great foreign scientific societies, and other works then not 

 often to be found in the country; there was also a small 

 collection of minerals and of other objects of scientific 

 interest. At the head of a long table, in the other 

 part of the room, sat the president, DeWitt, not then as 

 we have since seen him presiding at our meetings of a 

 later day, bowed with the weight of nearly four-score 



