Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/857

Rh true, for part if not all of the specimens are still there. In May, 1892, one of Prof. Vanuxem's daughters was applied to for information as to the whereabouts of this collection, by a geologist, as it contained, he said, the only known specimen of a certain South Carolina fossil, which he very much desired to examine.

Prof. Vanuxem was a member of and assisted in the organization and establishment of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and other scientific associations.

"It was the habit of those connected with the New York survey to meet at Albany at the end of each field season, for the purpose of comparing observations and becoming acquainted with each other. In the autumn of 1838 Prof. Vanuxem suggested that an invitation be extended to the geologists of Pennsylvania and Virginia for the purpose of devising and adopting a geological nomenclature that might be acceptable to all those who were then engaged in the State surveys, and thus become the nomenclature of American geology. This meeting was finally held in 1840, and then the Association of American Geologists was organized, which is now succeeded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest scientific bodies in the world."

Some few years after the close, of the New York survey, Prof. Vanuxem was solicited by Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, to become his associate in charge of that institution. Although it would have been a work in many ways congenial, the offer was declined, for various reasons that he deemed good ones.

In addition to the report that has been mentioned, and numerous papers on scientific subjects published in the American Journal of Science, he published An Essay on the Ultimate Principles of Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, and Physiology (Philadelphia, 1827); but it is his Report of the New York Survey which it is said "will remain his monument, and on which the reputation of his scientific attainments is based."

It would seem as though a man as devoted to science as the subject of this sketch would have his time and thoughts completely absorbed thereby, but not so in this case. The investigating turn of his mind prompted the examination of abstruse subjects, and to him the Scriptures presented an unlimited field. His careful scrutiny of the sacred writings and close study of all the extant commentators upon them resulted in an immense pile of manuscript books which he left as a monument of his interest in the subject, untiring industry, perseverance, and love of research, if nothing more. Although trained in the Presbyterian faith by his mother. Prof. Vanuxem had adopted, and expressed in these writings, views which were too broad and too far in advance of the time to be considered "orthodox."