Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/713

Rh in New York, in 1815; the reading to the society of a narrative of the earthquakes of the United States and in foreign parts, during 1811, 1812, and 1813; co-operation in a petition to the Common Council of New York for the grant of the building in the North Park for the purposes of Literature, Science, and Arts; the delivery, in connection with a curious case by which the town was stirred, of a public lecture on the Somnium, or dream, as a state different both from wakefulness and sleep; an excursion with friends to the region watered by the Wallkill, where the party disinterred a mammoth; participation in an excursion to the Neversink Hills, near Sandy Hook, where a dangerous mistake in their altitude, which had been supposed to be six hundred feet, was corrected, and the real height was found to be only half as great, or three hundred feet; acting as vice-president of the District Convention which met at Philadelphia for preparing a National Pharmacopœia; and co-operation with Samuel Wood and-Garrett K. Lawrence in recommending the willow-leaved meadow-sweet (Spiræa salicifolia) "as an admirable article for refreshment and health, and as a substitute for the tea of China." A description and classification of one hundred and sixty-six species of fish, chiefly found in the fresh and salt waters adjacent to the city of New York, which he offered to the Literary and Philosophical Society at one of its earlier meetings, was the nucleus of what is regarded as his chief work. He mentions in his record more than forty additional species described in Bigelow and Holly's Magazine, and several more in the Journal of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. An elaborate History by him of the Botanical Writers of America is to be found in the collections of the New York Historical Society. Of his literary and scientific work as a whole, in fact, it is well said in the Cyclopædia of American Literature that' numerous papers by him are included in the Transactions of the many learned societies of Europe and America of which he was a member; and he was often called upon, at the anniversaries of the societies of his own city, to appear as their orator. "His multifarious productions are consequently scattered over a number of publications and collections of pamphlets, and are somewhat overshadowed by the reputation of the learned bodies with which they are connected. They have fallen, to some extent, into an unmerited oblivion." He had committed his manuscripts to his brother-in-law, the late Dr. Samuel Akerly, as the friend most competent to write his biography, and the work was begun, when the papers were destroyed by the burning of the house in which they were deposited. Had Dr. Akerly not been thus prevented from completing this work, and had he been able to present Dr. Mitchill's life and writings in substantial form, the subject of our sketch would doubtless have received the credit to