February, 1768, the Hon. James Hamilton was elected president.

On the 22d of March the first scientific communication was made in "A Description of a New Orrery, planned and now nearly finished by David Rittenhouse, A.M." It is the first paper in the Transactions. Preparations were made in the same year for observing the approaching Transit of Venus, which was to occur on the 3d of June, 1769. The society voted to construct an observatory at Philadelphia, where, and also at Norriton, observations were to be taken under its auspices. Finding their means insufficient they, in September, sought the aid of the legislature, who voted a hundred pounds for the purchase of a reflecting telescope.

On the 22d of January, 1769, the two societies were united. An exciting contest took place at the first presidential election between Hamilton and Franklin as the candidates, which resulted in the election of the latter.

Additional aid being obtained from the legislature, temporary observatories were soon after erected in State-House square, Philadelphia, and Rittenhouse's residence at Norriton, and the desired observations made, the weather proving extremely favorable, with great success at these stations and from a building at Cape Henlopen.

In the same year the society instructed their committee on American Improvements to inquire as to "the best place for cutting a canal to join the waters of the Delaware and Chesapeake, with the probable expense that would attend the execution of it." An appeal for pecuniary aid in the prosecution of the surveys was made to the merchants of the city, and liberally responded to. The report, recommending what is known as the upper route, but declining to make an estimate of the cost, "judging it an undertaking beyond the ability of the country," appears in the first volume of the Transactions.

Soon after the consolidation of the two societies a committee was appointed to prepare a volume for the press from papers read at the meetings. A list was reported in August, 1769, and on the 22d of February, 1771, the work appeared.

The next efforts of the society were devoted to the manufacture of silk, and a company was formed for the purpose under its auspices. Endeavors were also made to introduce the culture of the vine. The society was, like every institution of learning, suspended during the Revolution. It, however, resumed its labors before the conclusion of the contest, re-assembling on the 5th of March, 1779. It was incorporated March 15, 1780. In 1785 a lot of ground, 70 by 50 feet, in State House square, facing Fifth street, was granted to the society, who proceeded to erect a hall, which was completed in 1791. Some $3500 was obtained towards defraying the expenses of the building; $540 of which were contributed by Franklin. The society derive a small revenue from the rental of the ground-floor of this building.

The laws of the society (passed Feb. 3, 1769) direct that its members "shall be classed into one or more of the following committees

"1. Geography, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy.

2. Medicine and Anatomy.

"It

The family of Rittenhouse, at the commencement of the last century, emigrated to New York, and afterwards removed to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where he was born, April 8, 1782. His parents removed during his childhood to a farm at Norriton, Montgomery county, about twenty miles from Philadelphia, where his early years were passed in agricultural pursuits. was at this place," says his eulogist, Rush, "his peculiar genius first discovered itself. His plough, the fences, and even the stones of the field in which he worked, were frequently marked with figures, which denoted a talent for mathematical studies." He also "made himself master" of Newton's Principia, and devoted himself to the science of fluxions, "of which sublime invention he believed himself to be the author; nor did he know for some years afterwards, that a contest had been carried on between Sir Isaac Newton and Leibnitz for the honor of that great and useful discovery."

His mechanical ingenuity was also early developed. At the age of seven he constructed a complete water-mill in miniature, and ten years after, having in the meantime received no instruction in the arts, made a wooden clock. Being permitted by his parents to follow his own inclinations in the choice of a livelihood, he abandoned agriculture, and erecting a small work-shop by the road-side on his father's land at Norriton, commenced business as a clock and mathematical instrument maker, many of his tools being the work of his own hands. The astronomical clock made by Rittenhouse, and used in his Observatory, is now in the possession of the Society.

His mental development was much aided by s friendship formed when he was about nineteen with the Rev. William Barton, who not long after married his sister. Barton was a young Irishman, who had received a liberal education, and possessed a few books. Rittenhouse, whose

early education had been limited, seized with avidity the advantages thus opened to him, and devoted himself to midnight study after his daily labors with such devotion, as to seriously impair his health for the remainder of his life.

It was while thus employed that he constructed his Orrery. The work was purchased by the College of New Jersey; and a second one, constructed by him on the same model, is now in the possession of the University of Pennsylvania.

Owing to the interest excited by this production, he was induced to remove to Philadelphia in 1770, where he continued in business for several years. He was elected a member of the Philosophical Society, and became a frequent contributor to its Transactions. We find him in August, 1773, making a report as chairman of a committee appointed to examine the first steamengine erected in this country. "It was made by Christopher Colles, for the purpose of pumping up water at a distillery." The report states that the engine "performed several strokes," but in consequence of its execution being attempted at a very low expense, it did not continue its notion long. A favorable opinion is expressed of the undertaking.*

In 1775 he delivered the annual oration before the same body. The subject of his discourse

was Astronomy.

In 1779 he was employed by the State of Pennsylvania as one of the commissioners for settling a disputed boundary between her territory and that of Virginia. În 1784, he performed a similar service on the western, and, in 1786, on the northern boundary of his native state. In 1789, he was employed in determining the boundary line between New Jersey and New York, and, in 1787, between the latter state and Massachusetts. "In his excursions through the wilderness," says Rush, "he carried with him his habits of inquiry and observation. Nothing in our mountains, soils, rivers, and springs, escaped his notice. It is to be lamented that his private letters and the memories of his friends are the only records of what he collected upon these occasions."

Soon after his election as President of the Philosophical Society, he gave a substantial proof of his interest in the institution by a donation of three hundred pounds.

In 1792, he was appointed a Director of the United States Mint, an office from which he retired three years after, in consequence of ill health.

He died on the 26th of June, 1796, and, in accordance with his expressed wish, was buried beneath the pavement of his observatory, in the garden adjoining his residence. Dr. Ashbel Green, whose church he attended, spoke at his grave. An eulogium upon him was delivered on the 17th of December following, before the Philosophical Society, by Dr. Benjamin Rush, and his life, by his nephew, William Barton,‡ published in 1813.

The best eulogy of his private character, when we take in consideration the high position he had gained for himself by his own exertions, is the simple statement of his friend, Ashbel Green, "He was, perhaps, the most modest man I ever knew."

The presidency was next filled, for three years, by Thomas Jefferson, On his retirement, Dr. Wistar became his successor.

Caspar Wistar was the grandson of an emigrant from Germany in 1717, who established a glass manufactory in New Jersey. His parents were Quakers, residing in Philadelphia, where he was born, September 13, 1761. In 1783, he visited England, to complete his medical studies. He returned to Philadelphia in January, 1787, having in the meantime inherited a large fortune by the death of his father, and commenced practice. In 1789, he was elected Professor of Chemistry, and, in 1808, of Anatomy, in the University, which acquired a high reputation as a medical school from his exertions and distinguished position, he being regarded in Europe, as well as in his own country, as one of the first medical authorities of his time. He was elected, July 20, 1787, a member, and, January 6, 1815, President, of the American Philosophical Society, and so continued until his death, January 22, 1818, contributing several articles to the Transactions.

His chief production is, A System of Anatomy, 2 vols. 8vo. 1814. He enjoys a genial reputation, in addition to his scientific honors, as the founder of the Wistar parties, which, originally gatherings of his friends every Saturday at his own residence, have since his death been continued on the same evening of the week by the survivors and their successors, each taking his turn as host.

Robert Patterson, the next president, was born in the north of Ireland, May 30, 1743. Не emigrated to Philadelphia in 1768, and in 1774 became the principal of the Wilmington Academy, Delaware. He served as brigade-major in the Revolutionary war, and in 1779 was appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of Pennsylvania, afterwards becoming Vice-Provost of that institution. In 1805, he was appointed Director of the Mint. He was chosen President of the American Philosophical Society in 1819, and died July 22, 1824. He is the author of several papers in the Society's Transactions.

William Tilghman, elected a member of the Society in 1805, was the next president.

He was born, August 12, 1756, in Talbot county, Maryland. He was admitted to the bar in Maryland in 1783, but in 1793 removed to Philadelphia, where he practised his profession until his appointment, by President Adams, as Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of the United States. The law establishing this office being repealed in about a year, Mr. Tilghman returned to practice. In July, 1805, he was appointed President of the Courts of Common Pleas in the first district, and, in February, 1806, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the state. He died April 30, 1827. He prepared, in 1809, by direction of the Legislature, a report of the English statutes in force within the state, and published in 1818 an eulogium on Dr. Wistar. was succeeded by Peter S. Du Ponceau.

He

This distinguished philologist was born in Rhé, an island on the western coast of France, where his father held a military command, June 3, 1760. He displayed at an early age a great aptitude for the study of languages, and acquired a knowledge of English and Italian from intercourse with the officers of an Irish and Italian regiment stationed in his vicinity. He was educated for the post of a military engineer, but was prevented from entering the army on account of being short-sighted. He was in consequence sent, in 1773, to a Benedictine College at St. Jean d'Angely. After he had remained there eighteen months his father died, and at the solicitation of his mother and family he consented to become a priest. He was made an instructor by the Bishop of Rochelle in the college at Bressuire in Poitou, but soon becoming tired of the place, he abandoned it in 1775, went to Paris, and for some time earned a frugal subsistence by translating English works by the sheet, English letters for business men, and giving lessons. He next formed the acquaintance of Count de Gebelin, author of the Monde Primitif, who made him his private secretary. While filling this office, he met at the house of Beaumarchais with Baron Steuben, who persuaded him to accompany him as his secretary and aide-de-camp to America. They sailed from Marseilles, and arrived at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, December 1, 1777. At the request of the Baron, Du Ponceau was appointed captain by brevet in the American army, February 18, 1778. He accompanied Steuben in his movements until the winter of 1780, when he was attacked at Philadelphia with cough and spitting of blood, and so reduced in strength that he was obliged to desist from further military service, and retired from the army. He became a citizen of Pennsylvania, and in October, 1781, was appointed secretary to Robert R. Livingston, then in charge of the department of Foreign Affairs. After filling this office for a period of twenty months he commenced the study of the law, and was admitted an attorney in June, 1785. He had previously been appointed a notary public. In 1778 he married, and in 1791 was appointed a sworn interpreter of foreign languages. The succeeding years were closely devoted to his profession, in which he rose to such eminence as to decline, in consequence of his prospects of practice, an appointment by Jefferson as Chief Justice of Louisiana. During his legal career he translated several valuable works on that science, and prepared some original essays on the same subject. Having gained a "comfortable competence" by his profession, he was enabled to devote himself to the less remunerative, but to him most agreeable labors of a philologist. He was much encouraged in this pursuit by the formation in March, 1815, by the American Philosophical Society, of which he had become a member in 1791, of the "committee of history, moral science, and general literature." He prepared and presented in behalf of this committee a report in 1819 on the Structure of the Indian Languages, which was printed in the Transactions, and gave him a distinguished position in his favorite department of learning, procuring him among other honors the degree of LL.D., and an election on the 20th of April, 1827, as member

of the Academy of Inscriptions of the French Institute. In May, 1835, the Linguistique prize, founded by Volney, was awarded him by the same body for his memoir on the Indian Languages of North America, afterwards published in Paris. His next and last work was a Dissertation on the Chinese Language, published in 1838, in which he maintained that the written language of that people was lexigraphic, that is composed of characters representing sounds, in opposition to the general opinion that it is ideographic, or composed of characters representing ideas.

Mr. Du Ponceau was the author of a number of memoirs contributed to the various learned societies of which he was a member, and in many instances president; of addresses delivered on various public occasions, and of several essays. He was a constant reader and writer throughout his life in spite of the defect in his vision, which in his latter years was accompanied by cataract. He is said to have been remarkable for great absence of mind. He died on the first day of April, 1844, at the advanced age of eighty-four years.

Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, elected President of the Society in 1846, was a native of Virginia, and for many years Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania. He occupied a distinguished position as a practitioner of medicine, and contributed largely to the medical literature of the country. He died at Philadelphia, July 1, 1853, at the age of seventy-four.

Dr. R. M. Patterson was elected President in 1849. He was born in Philadelphia, and was the son of Robert Patterson, a former President.

On completing his education as a chemist under Sir Humphrey Davy, he returned in 1812 to his native country, and soon after was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and Mathematics, in the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1828 he accepted a Professorship in the University of Virginia, where he remained until 1835, when he was appointed Director of the United States Mint at Philadelphia, which office he held until 1853, when his declining health induced him to resign.

Dr. Patterson was elected a member of the Society in 1809, in his twenty-second year, at an earlier age than any person previously admitted. He was a most active participant in the labors of the Society, and contributed largely both by oral and written communications to the interest of its proceedings. He delivered, May 25, 1843, while Vice-President, A Discourse on the Early History of the American Philosophic Society, pronounced by appointment of the Society at the celebration of its Hundredth Anniversary, to which we have to acknowledge our obligations. It closes with the reorganization of the association, March 5, 1779. He died in Philadelphia, September 5, 1854, aged 68 years.

On the resignation of Dr. Patterson, the office of President was conferred in 1853 upon Dr. Franklin Bache, a great-grandson of the illustrious founder of the Society. Dr. Bache has been for many years Professor of Chemistry in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, and has greatly aided in elevating that school to its pre

sent eminent position. As joint author with Dr. Wood of the United States' Dispensatory," he has rendered valuable service to the promotion

of medical science.

By the revised laws of the Society, his term of office having expired with the year 1854, the dignity of President of the Society was conferred at the election in January, 1855, upon his cousin, Professor Alexander Dallas Bache.

Professor A. D. Bache is a native of Philadelphia, and after having filled with great success the positions of Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, Principal of the High School of Philadelphia, and President of Girard College, was appointed to succeed Mr. Hassler as Superintendent of the Coast Survey of the United States, and has since resided in Washington.

Under the rare combination of high scientific talent with great administrative faculties, which were also possessed by his great-grandfather Franklin, Professor Bache has been enabled to exercise a personal supervision, as well over the details as over the grander generalizations attained in the progress of the gigantic survey under his control. And it is especially by this happy combination of power, that the most extensive survey hitherto undertaken by any nation has now been brought to the high state of perfection which renders it one of the proudest triumphs of American science.

Among the works of Professor Bache, of special interest, must be mentioned the admirable report on the subject of Education in Europe, founded upon personal investigations made by him under the authority of the Girard College, with a view to the organization of that institution.

Among the chief contributors to the early volumes of the Transactions we meet the name of Henry Ernst Muhlenberg. He was born in New Providence, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, November 17, 1753, and in April, 1763, sent with his two elder brothers to Halle, to complete his general education, and study theology. He returned in 1770, was ordained at the early age of seventeen, and became assistant to his father in the Lutheran Church at Philadelphia. During the occupation of the city by the British he retired to the country, where he employed his leisure in the study of botany. In 1780, he accepted a call to Lancaster, where the remainder of his life was passed in the discharge of his pastoral duties. He died of apoplexy, May 23,

1815.

Dr. Muhlenberg was a thorough classical and oriental scholar. He also paid great attention to the natural sciences, and especially to botany. He commenced this study during a retirement to the country and suspension of his clerical duties in 1777, during the occupation of Philadelphia by the British, and attained to eminence in his favorite pursuit. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1786, and contributed several papers to the Transactions. He soon after became a member of the leading associations of a similar character in Germany and the North of Europe, and his letters are frequently referred to in Wildenow's edition of the Species Plantarum. His chief publications are Catalogus Plantarum and Descriptio uberior gra

minum. His Flora Lancastriensis, and a number of papers on botany, theology, and ethics, remain in manuscript. His herbarium was purchased and presented to the American Philosophical Society.*

Benjamin Smith Barton also wrote for the same work. This eminent botanist was the son of the Rev. Mr. Barton of Lancaster, Pa., where he was born February 10, 1766. His mother was a sister of Rittenhouse. In 1786 he visited Europe to complete his education, and after passing some time at Edinburgh and London went to Göttingen, where he received his medical diploma. He returned to Philadelphia, and commenced practice in 1789, and in 1790 was appointed Professor of Natural History and Botany in the University. He afterwards succeeded Dr. Griffiths as Professor of Materia Medica, and Dr. Rush as Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine. In 1803 he published the first American elementary work on botany, and his college lectures on the same subject did much to diffuse a taste for the science. He commenced in 1804, and continued for several years, a Medical Physical Journal. He also wrote New Views of the Indian Tribes, a work on the American Materia Medica, and a paper on the Pyrola Umbellata, in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions of London. He died, December 19, 1815.

Dr. Adam Seybert, the chemist, mineralogist, and author of Statistical Annals of the United States from 1789 to 1815, 4to., who died at Paris, May 2, 1825, and Andrew Ellicott, Professor of Mathematics at West Point, who planned the city of Washington, and was also employed in running the boundary between the United States and the Spanish colonies, appear as contributors with Palisot de Beauvais and James Woodhouse. Ellicott died, August 28, 1820, in his 67th year. He published a Journal, with a map of Ohio, Mississippi, and part of Florida. Phila. 1803, 1814.

Ambroise Marie François Joseph Palisot de Beauvais was born at Arras, in 1752. He was educated at the college of Harcourt, in Paris, and became Receiver-General of Territorial Imposts. On the abolition of that office in 1777, he devoted his attention exclusively to natural history, and in 1781 became a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. In pursuit of his favorite studies he sailed to the coast of Guinea, with the intention of making a journey across Africa to Egypt, which he was unable to undertake. After passing some time at Owara and Benin, he sailed for St. Domingo, and arrived at Cap Français in June, 1788. He remained on the island in various positions connected with the government, until the overthrow of the French rule by the negroes. Having opposed the dominant party he was obliged to fly, and escaping with difficulty, landed at Philadelphia with the intention of proceeding to France, but learning that he had been proscribed as an emigrant, remained in this country, where he supported himself as a teacher of languages and musician, until the arrival of the French minister, Adet, who, himself a man of science, enabled the botanist to

Encyc. Amer. Darlington's Bartram. Allen's Am. Biog. Dict.

resume his studies in the new and inviting field before him. He made several scientific tours among and beyond the Alleghanies, and was employed to arrange the collection in Peale's Museum. On the receipt of permission he returned to his native country, taking the extensive collections he had formed with him. He became a member of the Institute in 1806, and died, January 21, 1820. He published Flore d'Oware et de B'nin, Paris, 1804-21, 2 vols. fol.; Insectes recueillis en Afrique et en Amérique, 180521, fol.; Essai d'une nouvelle Agrostographie ou Noureaux Genres des Graminées, 1812, 4to. and 8vo., all of which are illustrated.

James Woodhouse was born in Philadelphia, Nov. 17, 1770. He became Professor of Chemistry in the college of Philadelphia in 1795, and published several works on that department of science. He died, June 4, 1809.

Several of the other authors of the Transactions will appear at a later date as the founders of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The chief contributor to the recent volumes issued by the Society, is Mr. Isaac C. Lea. Mr. Lea, a native of Pennsylvania, has been long known as a member of one of the most extensive publishing houses of Philadelphia; and after a most successful career in business, has retired in favor of his son, to devote the remainder of his life to a study, the pursuit of which occupied the leisure of his earlier years.

His papers in the Transactions are very extensive, and finely illustrated; they are devoted to the description of the fresh water and land shells chiefly of the United States, to the history of which he has contributed more than any other person. His synopsis of Unionidæ, first printed by the Society, but of which a revised edition was published by the author in 1852, is at present the standard work for the classification of these objects, and has elicited many warm commendations from foreign and native conchologists. Other works by Mr. Lea are, Contributions to Geology, Philadelphia, 1833, and various papers in the Journal and Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences

RUTGERS COLLEGE.

THE clergy who accompanied the early Dutch emigrants brought with them the same love of learning which the Puritan divines had derived from the Church of England. Connected with an established church, within whose pale they were contented, they had no occasion to form a new organization to perpetuate their existence; and the recruits to their numbers were drawn, like those of the Episcopal clergy, from the mother country.

Like the Episcopalians, they soon experienced the inconvenience of waiting the arrival of accessions from Europe, or sending candidates for ordination across the ocean. A party soon arose who were desirous that the power of ordination should be conferred by the church in Holland on its offspring of America. This party was known as the "Coetus;" their opponents, who wished the old order of arrangements to continue, were known as the "Conferentie." The latter were for some time in the ascendant, but the incon

venience, delay, and expense of the voyage to and from Europe, finally weighed so heavily on congregations as well as clergy, that the Coetus party resolved to establish a school of theology at New Brunswick, New Jersey. A charter was obtained incorporating the institution as Queen's College in 1770. Its Board of Trustees met near the courthouse of Bergen county, and elected the Rev. Dr. Jacobus R. Hardenbergh the President.

While this matter was in progress a young student of divinity, John H. Livingston, was pursuing his studies preparatory to ordination in Holland, and obtained from the Dutch church their consent to a separate organization of the American congregations on condition that they should establish a Theological Professorate," as the Church of Holland could not and would not acknowledge and maintain any connexion with a church which did not provide herself with an educated ministry.” Livingston was in due course ordained, and on his return became minister of the Dutch church in New York. This church, which had never been identified with either of the contending parties, at his suggestion sent forth in 1771 a circular proposing a general convention to reconcile the points at issue. The assembly met, the desired union was effected, and Livingston unanimously appointed Professor of Divinity.

Dr. Hardenbergh remained president of the new institution, which flourished under his care, until his death in 1792. The college then suspended its instructions until 1807, when a proposition was made and adopted that the Theological Professorate should be united with the college, whose charter provided for a professorship of divinity, and that the professor should be appointed president. The union was effected, twenty thousand dollars raised to endow the professorship created, and in 1810 Dr. Livingston removed to New Brunswick and entered upon his new duties. The college was embarrassed in its finances, which were barely sufficient to sustain "half a Professorship of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy." It received no aid from the state, and was frequently compelled during the presidency of Livingston, as in that of his predecessor, to close its doors. Until the commencement of a college building in 1809, its instructions had been given in temporary localities, and as but one wing of the contemplated edifice was completed its accommodations were limited. Dr. Livingston, the new president, was a member of the eminent New York family of that name, and was born in Poughkeepsie in 1746, and a graduate of Yale in 1762. His subsequent history has already been given. He struggled manfully and hopefully with the difficulties of his position, maintaining his office as president with honor up to the time of his death in January, 1825. Dr. Philip Milledoler was his successor in the presidency and chair of theclogy.

Philip Milledoler was born in the year 1775. His parents were natives of Berne, Switzerland, who emigrated to this country in early life and settled in New York. Their son was graduated at Columbia College, 1792. He studied theology, and at the early age of nineteen was called to the church in Nassau between Fulton and John

*The Rev. Abraham Polhemus's Alumni Address, 1852, p. 6