X 
Proceedings of Roycd Society of Edinburgh. 
James Dwight Dana. By Prof. James Geikie. 
(Read July 6, 1896.) 
The subject of this notice came of good New England stock, his 
father, Janies Dana, having removed from Massacliussets to Utica, 
in New York, where his son was born on February 12, 1813. 
Young Dana appears to have early indicated a decided taste for the 
pursuit of science. While a boy he studied chemistry with his 
schoolmates, and made frequent excursions in search of minerals 
— a training which, no doubt, was largely instrumental in deter- 
mining the line of investigation in which he subsequently distin- 
guished himself. At the age of seventeen Dana entered Yale 
College, where he came under the influence of the elder Silliman, 
and finally determined to devote himself permanently to science. 
In 1833 he accepted an appointment as instructor in mathematics 
to the midshipmen of the U.S. Navy, and while thus engaged 
enjoyed a delightful cruise in the Mediterranean. Among the fruits 
of this excursion was Dana’s first paper — “ On the Conditions of 
Vesuvius in 1834.” His leisure hours on shipboard he seems to 
have employed in working out, by special methods, certain pro- 
blems of mathematical crystallography, some account of which he 
published in the following year. In 1836 we find Dana again at 
Yale, acting as assistant in chemistry to Prof. Silliman, and busy 
with the preparation of his first important work, the System of 
Mineralogy , — a volume of 580 pages, which was issued in 1857 — 
surely a remarkable achievement for a youth of twenty-four ! 
Next year he was so fortunate as to be appointed mineralogist and 
geologist to the Exploring Expedition to the Pacific and Southern 
Oceans under the command of Commodore Wilkes. The Expedi- 
tion, consisting of five ships, sailed in August 1838, and proceeded 
first to Madeira. Thereafter Bio Janeiro was visited, and the ships 
passed down the coast and through the Straits of Magellan, where 
one of the smaller vessels was lost in a storm, and the ship to which 
