Part 36

_Samuel Stehman Haldeman._--Samuel S. Haldeman (1812-1880) attained a respectable place as a philologist, but was also known as a naturalist and an archæologist. He went to Dickinson College two years, but not liking the course of study, left to study by himself. Shortly after his marriage in 1835, he settled at Chickies, Pennsylvania, became a silent partner with two brothers in the iron business, and spent most of his time in his library, where, for many years, he worked sixteen hours a day. His nature-studies resulted in “Fresh-Water Univalve Mollusca of the United States” (nine parts, 1840-1845); “Zoölogical Contributions” (1842-1843); “Zoölogy of the Invertebrate Animals” (1850); and more than seventy papers. He began early to take interest in the Indian languages, and published papers on them, as well as on the languages of Europe and China, and on spelling reform. These writings are now valuable chiefly as landmarks in the history of linguistic science; but this does not impair Haldeman’s contemporary reputation as a learned and accurate linguist. His last works were a monograph on “Pennsylvania Dutch” (1872) and “Outlines of Etymology” (1878).

_James Hammond Trumbull._--Well known as a thorough student of Indian languages was James H. Trumbull (1821-1897) of Hartford, Connecticut. He studied at Yale in the class of 1842, but was prevented by ill health from graduating. On linguistics he wrote “The Composition of Indian Geographical Names” (1870), “The Best Methods of Studying the Indian Languages” (1871), “Notes on Forty Algonkin Versions of the Lord’s Prayer” (1873), and “Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of Connecticut, with Interpretations” (1881). He also edited Roger Williams’ “Key into the Language of America” (1866).

_Francis James Child._--Francis J. Child (1825-1896), created a tradition of zeal for broad and sound learning, the influence of which is still strong. A Boston youth, he stood at the head of his class at Harvard, that of 1846. For forty-five years he was a professor in Harvard. In addition to some excellent editions of texts, he published an epoch-making monograph, “Observations on the Language of Chaucer” (1862), “Observations on the Language of Gower’s Confessio Amantis” (1866), and a monumental edition of “English and Scottish Popular Ballads” (1857-1858, revised and enlarged edition in ten volumes, 1882-1898), which is a model of accurate, comprehensive work, and which it is safe to say will not soon be superseded. It is due largely to Child that Harvard has become one of the leading centres of English study in America.

_Francis Andrew March._--The Nestor of living American philologists is Professor Francis A. March (born in 1825), since 1855 a teacher in Lafayette College. He graduated at Amherst College in 1845. At first he pursued philosophical studies, but was later drawn to the study of language. His “Method of Philological Study of the English Language” appeared in 1865. His “Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language” (1870) was a pioneer, and with the “Anglo-Saxon Reader” (1870) did good service in introducing the subject into American colleges. For many years Dr. March has been an ardent apostle of spelling reform.

_William Dwight Whitney._--Probably William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) is best known as a writer of textbooks and popular expositor of linguistic problems. Among scholars, however, his chief monument is his work in Sanskrit. Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, he was graduated at eighteen from Williams College. In the winter of 1848-1849 he began the study of Sanskrit; this study he continued under Salisbury at Yale, Weber at Berlin, and Roth at Tübingen. In 1854 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology at Yale, and held this chair until his death; being for many years accounted the leading philologist in America. He was a most industrious and systematic worker. His bibliography includes 360 titles. He wrote simple and lucid grammars of English (1877), French (1886), German (1869), and Sanskrit (1879); “Language and the Study of Language” (1867); “Oriental and Linguistic Studies” (1873-1874); “The Life and Growth of Language” (1875); several translations, with commentaries, of Sanskrit texts; and numerous papers and reviews. He was also editor-in-chief of “The Century Dictionary” (1889-1891) and read every proof of its 21,138 columns. But his greatest service to the cause of science was in holding up to his pupils a lofty ideal and a rigorous scientific method.

Hellenists, Latinists, and linguists of every sort [said Professor Perrin in a memorial address], and even historical students in the more restricted sense, all over this country and Europe, are now labouring, each in his chosen field, with a more equable spirit, a broader method, and a loftier ideal, because they have caught them all, directly or indirectly, from the master whose memory we honour.

_Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve._--Valuable work in classical philology has been done by Basil L. Gildersleeve (born in 1831). After graduating at Princeton in 1849, he studied at Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1853. For twenty years (1856-1876) he was professor of Greek (for five years, of Latin also) at the University of Virginia. In 1876 he was called to a similar chair at Johns Hopkins University, which he has since held. He founded (1880) and has since edited _The American Journal of Philology_, and has published, among other books, “A Latin Grammar” (1876, twice revised), “Essays and Studies, Educational and Literary” (1890), “The Syntax of Classical Greek” (part i., 1900, with Charles W. E. Miller), and editions of Justin Martyr, Persius, and Pindar.

=Natural and Physical Science.=--It is in the natural and physical sciences that our attempt to cover the ground will at once appear most hopeless. In some of these sciences, for example astronomy, physics, and geology, American scholars stand concededly among the foremost in the world; to practically all of them Americans have contributed noteworthy studies and discoveries. Lack of space prevents even the mention, with one or two exceptions, of living writers.

_John James Audubon._--Among the naturalists of America no name is more illustrious than that of the chief of our ornithologists, John James Audubon (1780-1851). His father was a French naval officer who had settled upon a plantation near New Orleans and married a lady of Spanish descent. When but a child Audubon used to draw pictures of birds; of those which were not satisfactory he made a bonfire at each birthday. When he was about eighteen, his father settled him on a farm near Philadelphia; here he gratified the naturalist’s passion to such an extent that he was good for nothing else. “For a period of twenty years,” he wrote later, “my life was a series of vicissitudes. I tried various branches of commerce, but they all proved unprofitable, doubtless because my whole mind was ever filled with my passion for rambling and admiring those objects of Nature from which alone I received the purest gratification.” He lived with his family successively in Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, and Louisiana; drawing and studying birds incessantly. Visiting England in 1826, he arranged for the publication of “The Birds of America” (1830-1839). It was to be published in numbers of five folio plates each, the whole to be in four volumes and to be sold for $1000 a copy. The work was to cost over $100,000; yet he had not money enough to pay for the first number. He supported himself by painting. He was elected (1830) a Fellow of the Royal Society. Audubon accompanied his “Birds” with “Ornithological Biographies” (five volumes, 1831-1839), the literary value of which is important; “it presents,” says one writer, “in language warm from his having been a part of the scenes, a virgin past of our country, and its forests and prairies, which can never be restored or so well described again.” “The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America,” with 150 plates, appeared in three volumes in 1845-1848; in this undertaking he was assisted by his two sons and the Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, South Carolina. The last three years of his life were spent in mental darkness. His claim to honorable rank in American letters cannot be denied.

_Spencer Fullerton Baird._--No American naturalist exerted a wider and deeper influence than Spencer F. Baird (1823-1887). A native of Pennsylvania and a graduate of Dickinson College (1840), he was the friend and in some work the collaborator of Audubon, Agassiz, and other zoölogists. Appointed assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1850, he directed much of the scientific exploration of the West; organised the National Museum (1857); succeeded Henry in 1878 as secretary of the Smithsonian and largely developed its work; and in 1874 became head of the Commission of Fish and Fisheries, and organised the science and practice of fish culture in America. He was besides a voluminous writer. His books and papers down to 1882 include 1063 titles. Of them we may mention “Catalogue of North American Reptiles” (1853), “The Birds of America” (with John Cassin, 1860), “The Mammals of North America” (1859), and “History of American Birds” (with Thomas M. Brewer and Robert Ridgway, 1874-1884).

_Alpheus Hyatt._--In zoölogy and palæontology one of the celebrated scholars of his day was Alpheus Hyatt (1838-1902). Born in Washington, D. C., he received his education at the Maryland Military Academy, Yale College, and under Agassiz at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard, from which he was graduated in 1862. After the Civil War, in which he rose to be a captain, he continued his studies in natural history and became active in fostering these studies in general. He helped to found _The American Naturalist_ in 1868, and was the principal founder of the American Society of Naturalists, organised in 1883. In 1881 he became professor of zoölogy and palæontology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Boston University. He was equally active in teaching, in popularising science, and in research. Some of his books are “Observations on Freshwater Polyzoa” (1866), “Revision of North American Poriferæ” (1875-1877), long the only work on North American commercial sponges, “The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim,” a long and important monograph on the influence of gravity on certain shells, published by the Boston Society of Natural History in its “Memoirs” (1880), “Genera of Fossil Cephalopods” (1883), “The Larval Theory of the Origin of Cellular Tissue” (1884), giving his theory of the origin of sex, and “The Genesis of the Arietidæ” (1889). He also edited a series of “Guides for Science-Teaching,” of several of which he himself was also the author. Few Americans indeed have done so much to make natural science popular as did Hyatt. His work in research was immensely fruitful. He has been called the founder of the new school of invertebrate palæontology, while in systematic zoölogy he made several discoveries which led to important revisions in biological classification.

_Alpheus Spring Packard._--The son of a Bowdoin College professor of the same name, Alpheus S. Packard (1839-1905) naturally entered Bowdoin and there came under the influence of Dr. Paul Chadbourne, who encouraged his inclination toward zoölogical study. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1861 and from the Maine Medical School in 1864, he worked under Agassiz at Harvard, devoting himself largely to the study of insects. In 1867 he became curator of invertebrates and in 1876 director, of the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1878 he was appointed professor of zoölogy and geology in Brown University, retaining this post till his death. He was one of the founders and for twenty years editor of _The American Naturalist_. Besides hundreds of papers, he wrote a “Guide to the Study of Insects” (1869); “The Mammoth Cave and Its Inhabitants,” jointly with F. W. Putnam (1872); “Life Histories of Animals” (1876), the first attempt since the Lowell Institute lectures of Agassiz to attempt a summary of embryological discoveries; “Insects Injurious to Forest and Shade Trees” (1890), “A Naturalist on the Labrador Coast” (1891), “A Text-Book of Entomology” (1898), and “Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work” (1901). Apropos of the last book it will be remembered that Packard, Cope, and Hyatt were the founders and chief exponents of the Neo-Lamarckian school of evolution. Packard was an indefatigable investigator and his contributions to entomology and zoölogy immensely advanced those sciences.

_Edward Drinker Cope._--Another celebrated naturalist was Edward D. Cope (1840-1897) of Philadelphia, whose studies in fossil vertebrates were of epoch-making significance. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1864 till 1867 he was professor of natural sciences in Haverford College. For twenty-two years thereafter he was engaged in exploration, research, and editorial work. In 1889 he became professor of geology and palæontology in the University of Pennsylvania. Before he was thirty he had laid his foundations in five chief lines of research, ichthyology, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and evolutionary philosophy. On all of these subjects he wrote much and wisely. He was the author of over four hundred volumes, papers, and memoirs, to say nothing of hundreds of editorial articles in _The American Naturalist_, which he edited from 1878 until his death. On the subject of evolution alone his most important works are “The Origin of Genera” (1868), “The Origin of the Fittest” (1886), and “The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution” (1896). His activity in research may be judged from the fact that he himself named and described 1115 out of some 3200 known species of North American fossil vertebrates. Naturally, in attempting so much, he fell short of perfection in some things.

His life-work, [says Professor Osborn,[24]] bears the marks of great genius, of solid and accurate observation, and at times of inaccuracy due to bad logic or haste and over-pressure of work. The greater number of his Natural Orders and Natural Laws will remain as permanent landmarks in our science. As a comparative anatomist he ranks, both in the range and effectiveness of his knowledge and his ideas, with Cuvier and Owen.... As a natural philosopher, while far less logical than Huxley, he was more creative and constructive, his metaphysics ending in theism rather than agnosticism.

_Elliott Coues._--Distinguished as an ornithologist, Elliott Coues (1842-1899) became favourably known also for researches in biology and comparative anatomy. After taking degrees at the Columbian University in 1861-1863, he entered the Union Army as assistant surgeon, studying flora and fauna wherever he went. In 1873-1876 he was surgeon and naturalist to the United States Northern Boundary Commission and in 1876-1880 was connected with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. He helped found the American Ornithologists’ Union and edited its organ, The Auk. His “Key to North American Birds” (1872, rewritten 1884 and 1901) is of great significance. He wrote also on “Birds of the Northwest” (1874), “Birds of the Colorado Valley” (1878), and with Winfrid A. Stearns, “New England Bird Life” (1881).

_David Starr Jordan._--David Starr Jordan (born in 1851) has in recent years been regarded chiefly as an educator; he became known through his studies on fishes. Entering Cornell University in 1868, he was appointed instructor in botany in 1870 and graduated M.S. in 1872. After teaching and studying science for some years, he was made (1879) professor of zoölogy at Indiana University, of which he became president in 1885. Since 1891 he has been president of Stanford University. Some of his books are “A Manual of the Vertebrate Animals of the Northern United States” (1876), “Science Sketches” (1887), “Fishes of North and Middle America” (1896-1899), “Footnotes to Evolution” (1898), and “The Food and Game Fishes of North America” (1902). He is a leader both in his chosen scientific field and in educational thought.

_Asa Gray._--The best-known botanist of his epoch was Asa Gray (1810-1888) a native of Paris, Oneida County, New York. He graduated in medicine at Fairfield College in 1831, but soon gave up medicine for botany and in 1842 was elected to the Fisher professorship of natural history in Harvard University. Any adequate narrative of Gray’s tremendous activity as a writer and teacher is out of the question here; we can only say that his widely known and long standard text-books on botany (beginning with the “Elements of Botany,” 1836, which grew into the “Structural and Systematic Botany” of 1879, and including his “How Plants Grow,” 1858, and “How Plants Behave,” 1872) represent but a small part of his literary activity. With Dr. Torrey he began (1838) the “Flora of North America”; he wrote also valuable botanical memoirs and many valuable articles for _The North American Review_ and _The American Journal of Science_.

_Edward Hitchcock._--Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864), a Congregational clergyman, and for thirty-nine years a professor of science in Amherst College, was especially devoted to geological study. A large number of his books and papers relate to geological subjects, which he helped to make popular; among these books are “Economical Geology” (1832), “Geology of Massachusetts” (1841), “The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences” (1851), and “Ichnology of New England” (1858). He was the first president of the Association of American Geologists, and was president of Amherst College from 1845 till 1854.

_Louis Agassiz._--The celebrated naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873) was of Swiss birth and did not come to America to live until he was forty-one years of age, and had already become famous for those studies of glacial phenomena set forth in “Études sur les glaciers” (1840) and “Système glaciaire” (with Guyot and Desor, 1847). For twenty-five years (1848-1873) he was professor of natural history at Harvard, and in that time, besides training some of the most eminent of living American scientists, he did much to arouse popular interest in science and scientific progress. Of the “Contributions to the Natural History of the United States” which he planned to publish in ten volumes, he lived to issue only four (1857-1862). For Agassiz Nature was “the expression of the thought of the Creator.” In opposing the Darwinians as to the origin of species, Agassiz unfortunately took the wrong side of the question of how the Creator expressed His thought; but he remains nevertheless distinguished both as a scientist and as an educator; a singularly great and gentle nature, strong and true.

_Arnold Henry Guyot._--Less distinguished than his compatriot Agassiz, but of enduring fame, was the geographer Arnold Guyot (1807-1884). Born near Neuchâtel, Switzerland, he studied there and in Germany, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from Berlin in 1835. Like Agassiz he became known for his glacial discoveries; and like Agassiz he came to America in the troubled year 1848. From 1854 until his death he was professor of geology and physical geography at Princeton. His text-books and maps revolutionised the teaching and study of geography. He wrote also many scientific papers and memoirs, among which may be noted especially those describing his studies in the Appalachian Mountains. American science owes much to his unselfish devotion.

_James Dwight Dana._--James D. Dana (1813-1895), born in Utica, New York, was attracted by the fame of the elder Silliman to Yale College, where he graduated in 1833. To the Sillimans he became allied by his marriage with Henrietta F. Silliman in 1844; and like them he had a long and notable career closely connected with Yale College, where he became (1835) Silliman professor of natural history and geology. He wrote many reports on geological, zoölogical, and mineralogical subjects, besides “A Manual of Mineralogy” (1851), “A Manual of Geology” (1862), “On Coral Reefs and Islands” (1853), “Science and the Bible” (_Bibliotheca Sacra_, 1856-1857), and “Corals and Coral Islands” (1872).

_Alexander Winchell._--Another noted geologist was Alexander Winchell (1824-1891). Graduating from Wesleyan University in 1847, he became a teacher of science in various schools, and in 1853 professor of physics and civil engineering in the University of Michigan; being soon transferred to the chair of geology, zoölogy, and botany. He afterward taught at Syracuse and Vanderbilt Universities. From the latter institution in 1878 he was dismissed because his views on evolution were “contrary to the plan of redemption.” The next year he was recalled to Michigan. Besides being a leading spirit in forming the Geological Society of America, and in establishing _The American Geologist_, he was a voluminous writer, especially of scientific works for popular use, and endeavoured in these works to show the essential harmony between science and Christian dogma. Thus he did the work of a peacemaker in what has long been a heated conflict.

_Nathaniel Bowditch_ (1773-1838) was a pioneer in the study of astronomy and mathematics in America. At first a cooper and then a ship-chandler, he was studious, and learned Latin in order to read Newton’s “Principia.” As supercargo on a merchant vessel during several voyages, he became expert in the theory of navigation and published in 1802 “The New American Practical Navigator,” which in a revised form is published by the United States Hydrographic Office and is the standard compendium for navigators. In 1829 he translated Laplace’s “Méchanique céleste,” adding valuable notes.

_Benjamin Peirce._--In the annals of mathematics and astronomy the name of Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880) has a place of distinction. Born at Salem, Massachusetts, he became a pupil of Bowditch, and graduated at Harvard in 1829, in the class with Holmes. He became a tutor at Harvard in 1831, professor of mathematics and physics in 1833, and nine years later Perkins professor of mathematics and astronomy, holding this chair till his death. From 1867 till 1874, succeeding Dallas Bache, he was superintendent of the Coast Survey. He wrote an important series of mathematical text-books; “System of Analytical Mechanics” (1857); “Linear Associative Algebra” (communications to the National Academy of Sciences, collected in 1870); and Lowell Institute lectures on “Ideality in the Physical Sciences” (1881). He obtained eminence, it has been said, equally in mathematics, physics, astronomy, mechanics, and navigation.

_The Sillimans._--In the annals of American science no other name is so long and favourably known as that of the Sillimans. Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864) was for fifty years, beginning in 1802, professor of chemistry in Yale College and founded (1818) _The American Journal of Science and Arts_, which he edited for twenty-eight years. His son, Benjamin, Jr. (1816-1885), taught and studied chemistry, mineralogy, and geology in Yale, and was associate editor (1838-1846) of his father’s _Journal_. For the rest of his life he was a professor of chemistry, first in what is now the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, then at Louisville University, and later in the Academic and Medical Departments at Yale. In 1858 he published “First Principles of Natural Philosophy or Physics”; and he was the author of many scientific memoirs, addresses, and reports. He was one of the pioneers in science-teaching in America, and his influence on scientific education was deep and abiding.