Page:Biographical Memoir of Samuel George Morton - George Bacon Wood.djvu/18

 The possession of such materials naturally led to the wish to give diffusion and permanence to the knowledge which they laid open. Hence originated Dr. Morton's great work on American Crania, in which accurate pictorial representations are given of a great number of the skulls of the aborigines of this continent, with descriptions, historical notices, and various scientific observations; all preceded by an essay on the varieties of the human species, calculated to give consistency to the necessarily desultory statements which follow. The preparation of this work cost the author a vast deal of labor, and an amount of pecuniary expenditure which has never been repaid, unless by the reputation which it gained for him, and the consciousness of having erected a monument to science, honorable to his country, and likely to remain as a durable memorial of his own zeal, industry, and scientific attainment. It was published in 1839. It is due to Dr. W. S. W. Ruschenberger to state, that the work was inscribed to him by Dr. Morton, with the acknowledgment that some of its most valuable materials were derived from his researches in Peru.

In September, 1839, Dr. Morton was elected Professor of Anatomy in the Pennsylvania Medical College, the duties of which office he performed until November, 1843, when he resigned. In this Institution he was associated with the late Dr. George McClellan, who may be looked on as its founder, and for whom he formed a friendship which ended only with life.

On the 26th of May, 1840, he was elected one of the Vice-Presidents of the Academy of Natural Sciences, in which capacity he very often presided at its meetings, in the absence of the President.

He was engaged about this time in preparing a highly interesting memoir on the subject of Egyptian Ethnography, based mainly upon the observation and comparison of numerous crania, in the collection of which he was much aided by Mr. George R. Gliddon, whose residence in Egypt gave him opportunities, which an extraordinary zeal in all that concerns the ancient inhabitants of that region, urged him to employ to the best possible advantage. This memoir was embraced in several communications to the American Philosophical Society, in the years 1842 and 1843, which were published in the Transactions of that Society (Vol. IX., New Series, p. 93, A. D. 1844), and also in a separate form under