Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/275

Rh Mr. Thompson was graduated from the University of Vermont in 1823, at the advanced age of twenty-seven years, and immediately turned his attention to making known the natural and civil features and history of his native State to its own inhabitants and to the world beyond its borders, which was the chief occupation of his life. Within a year his first publication in this field, a Gazetteer of Vermont, appeared at Montpelier. His first bound volume was an arithmetic, published in 1826, which had a general sale through the State. While serving as principal of an academy in Canada, he issued a geography and map of Canada for schools, which passed through several editions.

In 1832 Mr. Thompson edited and was the chief contributor to the Green Mountain Repository, a monthly magazine published for about a year at Burlington. In the following year appeared his History of Vermont from its earliest settlement to the close of the year 1832.

Taking up the study of theology and supporting himself in part by teaching in the Vermont Episcopal Institute and elsewhere, he was prepared for orders, and became a deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1836. He preached from time to time in various parishes of northern Vermont and New York, and usually supplied the pulpit of St. Paul's Church, Burlington, during the illness or absence of the rector. His health not being good enough to allow of his undertaking the labors of a parish, and being a man of "deep and unconquerable modesty of spirit," he never advanced to the priesthood.

His earlier works aroused in him a desire to issue something larger and fuller in the same line, and for many years he industriously collected from various "oldest inhabitants" and scattered records facts relating to the history, geography, and natural resources of Vermont. From 1838 to 1842 he devoted most of his time to putting together these materials and publishing the resulting Natural, Civil, and Statistical History of Vermont. His attainments in natural history were at that time limited, and he obtained considerable assistance in preparing the accounts of the plants and several classes of animals for this book from other New England naturalists. Having made the mammalia quite a specialty, he described these himself.

The undertaking was most thoroughly and conscientiously carried out, and by the time the book was ready for the press all his savings had been expended. At this juncture the Burlington publisher, Mr. Chauncey Goodrich, who was a neighbor and friend of Mr. Thompson, offered to get out the book for him at the usual prices for the labor and materials without any contingent share in the profits, and to wait for payment from the sales of the work. This generous offer was promptly accepted, and the volume,