Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/128

118 A proposition was made to Mr. Schoolcraft in 1828 to go as one of the scientific corps of an exploring expedition which the Government contemplated sending to the south seas, under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy. In his reflections on the prospects of this expedition and the acquisitions to knowledge that might be expected to accrue from it, he regarded the experiments of Dr. Maskelyn, denoting a greater specific gravity in the central portion of the globe than in its crust, as opposed to a theory that was then advocated of an interior void. Yet he thought "we are advertised, by the phenomena of earthquakes, that this interior abounds with oxygen, hydrogen gas, caloric, and sulphur, and that extraordinary geological changes are affected by their action. It does seem improbable that the proposed expedition will trace any open connection with such an interior world; but it may accumulate facts of the highest importance." There was something, however, about the getting up and organization of the expedition which he did not like, and an apprehension whether Congress would not cripple it by voting meager supplies and outfits. He declined to go.

A note from Mr. G. W. Featherstonaugh, giving a disparaging view of American scientific achievement, and inclosing the prospectus of a journal designed to correct these things, gave Mr. Schoolcraft opportunity for bearing strong tribute to the genuineness of real American scientific research. The critic's remarks might be true as to a certain class, who had not made science a study; but, if applied to the power and determination of the American mind devoted to natural history, it was "not only unjust in a high degree, but an evidence of an overweening self-complaisance, imprecision of thought, or arrogance. No trait of the American scientific character has been more uniformly and highly approbated by the foreign journals of England, France, and Germany than its capacity to accumulate, discriminate, and describe facts. For fourteen years past, Silliman's Journal of Science, though not exclusively devoted to natural sciences, has kept both the scientific and the popular intelligent mind of the public well and accurately advised of the state of natural science the world over. Before it, Bruce's Mineralogical Journal, though continued but for a few years, was eminently scientific; and Cleaveland's Mineralogy has had the effect to diffuse scientific knowledge not only among men of science, but other classes of readers. In ornithology, in conchology, and especially in botany, geology, and mineralogy, American mind has proved itself eminently fitted for the highest tasks."

The Michigan Historical Society was founded, chiefly through Mr. Schoolcraft's instrumentality, in 1828, and the Algic Society on February 28, 1832. The latter organization had in view the