70 21ie American Geologist. Auyust, i897 
doctor of medicine in the class of 1829, having received the 
Boylston prize for a dissertation on Parm-ia Mellita. 
Hie young physician had already manifested his predilec- 
tion for the inanimate world. It is stated that his interest in 
mineralogy was aroused, while staying in Lancaster, Mass., 
by tinding the crystals of made or chiastolite, which there 
abound in the glacial drift. Even before his graduation in 
medicine, he had in the summer of 1827 visited Nova Scotia 
with his friend Francis Alger, for the purpose of collecting 
minerals and making observations upon the geology of that 
province. He had also, partly for the benefit of his health, 
tramped through New York and New Jersey, with Baron Led- 
erer, McClure, Say, Lesueur, and Troost, men whose acquaint- 
ance was apt to foster an interest in natural history. In the 
summer following his graduation, again accompanied by his 
friend Alger, Jackson went in a chartered vessel to Nova Sco- 
tia to continue the examination the}^ had already begun. 
The results of these excursions formed his first published w^ork. 
Evidently with the intention of fitting himself for a high 
place in the profession for which his tutors had prepared him, 
Jackson, in rhe fall of 1829, went to Europe. He studied med- 
icine in the University of France, attending lectures in the 
Ecole de Medicine, the College de France, and the scientific 
lectures of the Sorbonne as well as those on geology given by 
De Beaumont in the Ecole Royale des Mines. With this distin- 
guished geologist lie formed a friendship which lasted many 
years. 
In 1831 Jackson walked through a large part of soutliern 
Europe, visiting the principal cities. His route took him 
through Switzerland, Piedmont, Lombardy, Tyrol, Bavaria, 
and Austria. In Vienna he performed autopsies with Drs. 
John Fergus of Scotland and Johannes Glaisner of Poland, on 
about two hundred patients who died of the cholera in the 
hospitals of that city. Thence he went to Trieste, Venice, 
Padua, Florence, Rome, and Naples, at which latter place he 
witnessed an eruption of Vesuvius. Going thence to Sicily, 
he ascended Etna, and then made a study of the Lipari is- 
lands. While in France he had not neglected to examine the 
volcanic district of Auvergne. 
Dr. Jackson returned to America in the same ship with 
