Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/706

  matter to permit them to adjust themselves to a certain degree of domesticity or to sociability; and it is the social state which, other things being equal, is the highest product of animal as well as of human intelligence.—Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.



HE New York Academy of Sciences, founded in 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History, is the oldest and most influential scientific society in the city. During a period of seventy-six years it has had but six presidents, viz.: Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, who served seven years; Prof. John Torrey, four years; Major Joseph Delafield, thirty-eight years; Prof. Charles A. Joy, two years; Prof. John S. Newberry, twenty-four years; Prof. Oliver P. Hubbard, one year. At the annual election held February, 1893, Prof. Henry Carrington Bolton, Ph. D., was elected the seventh president.

was born in New York city, January 28, 1843, being the son of Jackson Bolton, M. D., and Anna Hinman, daughter of Elisha North, M. D., of New London, Conn. From both his paternal and maternal ancestors Dr. Bolton inherits traits that co-operate to give him scholarly tastes and stability of character.

The family of Bolton is among the few English ones able to show their descent from a period not far removed from the Conquest (1066). The extensive Yorkshire domain, from which the family derived its name, is mentioned in Domesday, and in 1135 Oughtrede de Bolton appears as Lord of Bolton and Bowbearer of Bowland Forest. From their estates in the charming Ribble Valley, near the southern border of Lancashire, the family spread through Yorkshire and adjoining counties, bestowing their name on many a dale and infant vill, so that to-day there are seventeen places in England known as Bolton, with or without distinguishing suffixes. From earliest times the Boltons were yeomen and tradesmen, but many of their sons entered the service of the Church, and not a few of them became eminent for scholarship.

In 1530 the direct ancestors of Dr. Bolton were living on an estate called Brookhouse, near the town of Blackburn, Lancashire, and from them he traces his descent without a missing link in the chain. In 1718 one of the family left England and settled in Philadelphia; his son and his grandson became prominent shipping merchants in Savannah, Ga., the latter taking into partnership his nephew Curtis, grandfather of the subject of this sketch. 