Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/565

Rh materials for exchange. In 1823 my identification of the previously supposed white augite of Goshen with the species spodumene, gave me confidence in the study of minerals, while it increased my stock of specimens desirable to mineralogists. The exchange I then carried on with the Austrian consul-general, Baron von Lederer, in behalf of his own collection and that of the Imperial Cabinet of Vienna, rapidly enriched my little museum in foreign minerals. Indeed, from the first it was sufficiently ample, to serve a useful purpose in the instruction of beginners; and was the sole resource of Prof. Amos Eaton in the lectures he gave during two seasons before the students of the institution.

"On leaving college I resided a year partly in Cambridge and partly in Boston, during which period I profited much in extending my collections, through visits to new localities in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and still more by exchanges with Prof. Nuttall and other active cultivators of mineralogy in the region. I soon after made a very successful tour into Maine, where, at Paris, I was the fortunate discoverer of the most remarkable green and red tourmalines then known. With some of these I made profitable exchanges with the British Museum and other large collections. My association in 1828 with Prof. Silliman as his assistant, and afterward with the college as a lecturer on natural science for many years, afforded me unusual facilities for the extension of my cabinet. All the best localities of Connecticut were frequently visited, specimens of rare interest secured, and the means of supplying scientific correspondents abundantly obtained. These objects were still further effected by journeys into adjoining States and the Canadas, until 1835, when I became Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, where a new and very ample field was opened for the extension of my collections. From that time to the present [1871], with the exception of the period of the civil war, I have passed nearly the half of each year in the South, and been engaged to a considerable extent in scientific and mining explorations, which have resulted in varied and rich contributions to my cabinet. These travels have also embraced the Western or Mississippi States, attended by similar results. But most of all have I gained by frequent excursions to the Old World, having since 1839 twelve times visited Europe, where my exchanges and purchases of specimens have been conducted on a scale, I am led to believe, not surpassed by any of my countrymen. Numbers, however, have never been my aim in these acquisitions. I have rather sought what was characteristic and instructive—not, however, to the neglect of the rare and beautiful."

The foregoing relates to the mineralogical part of Prof.