American Men of Mind Part 12

Audubon's story is a curious and interesting one. His father, the son of a Vendean fisherman, after working his way up to the command of a French man-of-war, purchased a plantation in Louisiana, which at that time belonged to France. He married there, and there, in 1780, John James Audubon was born. He was a precocious child, and early developed a love for nature, which his parents encouraged in every way they could. He was especially fond of drawing birds and coloring his drawings. He acquired so much skill in doing this that his father sent him to Paris and placed him in the studio of the celebrated painter, David.

It is related of young Audubon that his drawings for many years fell so far short of his ideal, that on each of his birthdays he regularly made a bonfire of all he had produced during the previous year. He cared for nothing else, however, and after his return to America, his home became a museum of birds' eggs and stuffed birds. He took long tramps through the wilderness, with no companions save dog and gun, all the time adding new drawings to his collection. Some birds he was obliged to shoot, afterwards supporting them in natural positions while he painted them; others which he could not approach, he drew with the aid of a telescope, representing them amid their natural surroundings, and all with painstaking care and exact.i.tude.

This work, occupying years of time, and accompanied by every sort of suffering and exposure, by long trips through the wilderness of the west, in heat and cold, snow and rain, was carried forward from pure love of nature and enthusiasm for the work itself, without thought or hope of reward. Audubon's friends began to consider him a kind of harmless madman, for what sane person would devote his life to a work so laborious and seemingly so useless? He made a little money occasionally by giving drawing lessons; but he was never content except when roaming the plains and forests, hunting for some new specimen. For his ambition was to study and draw every kind of bird which lived in America.

In 1824 he happened to be in Philadelphia, and met there a son of Lucien Bonaparte, to whom he showed his drawings. The Frenchman was at once deeply interested, for he saw their beauty and value, and he urged upon Audubon that some arrangement be made by which they could be published and given to the world. The obstacles in the way of such an enterprise were enormous, for the processes of color reproduction at that time were slow and expensive, and it was estimated that the cost of the entire work would exceed a hundred thousand dollars.

But Audubon had overcome obstacles before that, and three years later he issued the prospectus of his famous "Birds of America." It was to consist of four folio volumes of plates, and the price of each copy was fixed at a thousand dollars. Three years more were spent in securing subscriptions, and then the work of publication began, though Audubon had barely enough money to pay for a single issue. Funds came in, however, after the appearance of the first number, and the work went steadily forward to completion in 1839. It was called by the great naturalist, Cuvier, "the most magnificent monument that art ever raised to ornithology." It contained 448 beautifully colored plates, showing 1065 species of North American birds, each of them life size.

Before it was completed, Audubon had planned another work on similar lines, to be known as "The Quadrupeds of America," and set to work at once to gather the necessary material, which meant the study from life of each of these animals. He even projected an extensive trip to the Rocky Mountains in search of material, but was pursuaded by his friends to give it up, as he was then nearly sixty years of age, and suffering from the effects of his long years of exposure. His sons a.s.sisted him in the preparation of the work, the first volume of which appeared in 1846, the last in 1854, three years after his death.

Audubon's life ill.u.s.trates strikingly the compelling power of devotion to an ideal. Few men have met such discouragements as he, and fewer still have overcome them. For many years, in all climates, in all weathers, pausing at no difficulty or peril, his life frequently endangered by wild beasts or still wilder savages, he trudged the pathless wilderness, quite alone, sleeping under a rude shelter of boughs or in a hollow tree, living on such game as he could shoot, seeking only one thing, new birds, and when he found them, observing their habits and setting them on paper with an infinite patience. On one occasion, rats got into the room where his drawings were stored, and destroyed almost all of them; but he set to work at once re-drawing them, where most men would have given up in despair. His work remains to this day the standard one on American birds--a mighty monument to the ideals of its maker.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AGa.s.sIZ]

Jean Louis Rudolphe Aga.s.siz was also a born naturalist, but no such obstacles confronted him as Audubon surmounted, nor did he strike out for himself a field so absolutely original. Born in Switzerland in 1807, the descendent of six generations of preachers, but destined for the profession of medicine, he refused to be anything but a naturalist. From his earliest years, he showed a pa.s.sion for gathering specimens, and his first collection of fishes was made when he was ten years old. He received the very best training to be had in Switzerland, France and Germany, and early attracted attention for original work of the most important description. He came to be recognized as the greatest authority on fishes in Europe, and his work on fossil fishes, published in 1843, was a contribution to science of the first importance.

In 1846, Aga.s.siz came to the United States, partly to deliver a course of lectures at Boston and partly to make himself familiar with the geology and natural history of this country. His reception was so cordial and he found so much to interest him here, that he accepted the chair of zoology and geology in the Lawrence Scientific School at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, and decided to make the United States his home. He soon made Cambridge a great scientific centre, and proved himself the most inspiring, magnetic and influential teacher of science this country has ever seen.

In succeeding years, he traversed practically the entire country, acc.u.mulating vast collections of specimens which formed the foundation of the great natural history museum at Cambridge. He was preparing himself for the publication of a comprehensive work to be called "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," the first volume of which appeared in 1857. Succeeding years were occupied with a journey to Brazil, another around Cape Horn, and the establishment of the Pekinese Island school of natural history, where he was able to carry out his long contemplated plan of teaching directly from nature.

But his labors had impaired his health, and he died in Cambridge in 1873, after a short illness. His grave is marked by a boulder from the glacier of the Aar, and shaded by pine trees brought from his native Switzerland.

Aga.s.siz was one of the most remarkable teachers of science that ever lived. Handsome, enthusiastic, overflowing with vitality, and with a learning broad and deep, his students found in him a real inspiration to intellectual endeavor. His lectures, however technical and abstruse their subjects, were of an incomparable clarity and simplicity. He was one of the first to advocate the teaching of science to women, not in its technical details, but in its broad outlines.

"What I wish for you," he said, one day, addressing a cla.s.s of girls, "is a culture that is alive and active. My instruction is only intended to show you the thoughts in nature which science reveals.

"A physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle," he used to say.

"Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance."

Of the pupils of Aga.s.siz, not the least famous was his son, Alexander, who, after graduating from Harvard, a.s.sisted his father in his work, collected many specimens for the museum at Cambridge, and was finally appointed a.s.sistant in zoology there. In the following years he put his scientific knowledge to a very practical use. In his geological surveys of the country, he had been impressed with the richness of the copper mines on Lake Superior. For five years, he acted as superintendent of the famous Calumet and Hecla mines, developing them into the most successful copper mines in the world, and himself gaining wealth from them which permitted his making gifts to Harvard aggregating half a million dollars. It was characteristic of him that, after his service with the Calumet and Hecla, he resumed his duties at the museum at Cambridge, and continued as curator until ill health compelled his resignation in 1885.

Among other pupils of Aga.s.siz who won more than ordinary fame as naturalists may be mentioned Albert Smith Bickmore, Alonzo Howard Clark, Charles Frederick Hartt, Alpheus Hyatt, Theodore Lyman, Edward Sylvester Morse, Alpheus Spring Packard, Frederick Ward Putnam, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, William Stimpson, Sanborn Tenney, Addison Emory Merrill, Burt Green Wilder and Henry Augustus Ward--as brilliant a galaxy of names as American science can boast, bearing remarkable testimony to the inspiring qualities of their great teacher.

What Aga.s.siz did for geology and natural history, Asa Gray to some extent did for botany. Born at Paris, N. Y., in 1810, and at an early age abandoning the study of medicine for that of botany, he accepted, in 1842, a call to the Fisher professors.h.i.+p of natural history at Harvard, a post which he held for over thirty years. Gray's work began at the time when the old artificial system of cla.s.sification was giving way to the natural system, and he, perhaps more than any other one man, established this system firmly on the basis of affinity.

In 1864, he presented to Harvard his herbarium of more than two hundred thousand specimens, and his botanical library. He remained in charge of the herbarium until his death, adding to it constantly, until it became one of the most complete in the world. His publications upon the subject of botany were numerous and of the highest order of scholars.h.i.+p, and long before his death he was recognized as the foremost botanist of the country.

Scarcely inferior to him in reputation was John Torrey. It was to Torrey that Gray owed his first lessons in botany, and if the pupil afterwards surpa.s.sed the master, it was because he was able to build on the foundations which the master laid. John Torrey, born in New York City in 1796, was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and in early life determined to become a machinist, but afterwards studied medicine and began to practice in New York, taking up the study of botany as an avocation. He found the profession of medicine uncongenial, and finally abandoned it altogether for science, serving for many years as professor of chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. The succeeding years brought him many honors, and saw many works of importance issue from his hands.

The progress of the last century in the various branches of science is an interesting study, and America has made no inconsiderable contributions to every one of them. In astronomy, six names are worthy of mention here. The first of these, John William Draper, was noted for his devotion to many other lines of science, especially to photography, and was the first person in the world to take a photograph of a human being. His service to astronomy was in the application of photography to that science. In 1840, he took the first photograph ever made of the moon, and a few years later published his "Production of Light by Heat,"

an early and exceedingly important contribution to the subject of spectrum a.n.a.lysis.

His work in astronomy and more especially in physics was carried on most worthily by his son, Henry Draper, who, at his home at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, built himself an observatory, mounting in it a reflecting telescope, which he also made. His description of the processes of grinding, polis.h.i.+ng, silvering, testing and mounting it has remained the standard work on the subject. With this telescope he took a photograph of the moon which remains one of the best that has ever been made. Among his other noteworthy achievements were his spectrum photographs of 1872 and 1873, and in 1880 his photograph of the great nebula in Orion, the first photograph of a nebula ever secured. Perhaps the most brilliant discovery ever made in physical science by an American was that by Draper in 1877, when he demonstrated the presence of oxygen in the sun so conclusively that it could not be disputed. It was a sort of _tour de force_ that took the scientific world by surprise and gained its author the widest recognition.

The services of Lewis Morris Rutherford to astronomy resembled in many ways those of Draper. Starting in life as a lawyer, he abandoned that profession at the age of thirty-three to devote his whole time to science, princ.i.p.ally to the perfection of astronomical photography and spectrum a.n.a.lysis. The service which photography has rendered to astronomy can scarcely be overestimated, and these pioneers in the art were laying the foundations for its recent wonderful developments. He was the first to attempt to cla.s.sify the stars according to their spectra, and invented a number of instruments of the greatest service in star photography. All in all, it is doubtful if anyone added more to the development of this branch of the science than did he.

Very different from the services of these men were those rendered the science of astronomy by Charles Augustus Young. Called to the chair of astronomy at Princeton University in 1877, he held that important position for thirty years, his courses a source of inspiration to his students. He was a member of many important scientific expeditions, invented an automatic spectroscope which has never been displaced, measured the velocity of the sun's rotation, and was a large contributor to public knowledge of the science.

Equally important have been the contributions made by Samuel Pierpont Langley, perhaps the greatest authority on the sun alive to-day. He showed a decided fondness for astronomy even as a boy, and at the age of thirty was a.s.sistant in the observatory at Harvard. Two years later, he was invited to fill the chair of astronomy in the Western University of Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh, and his work there began with the establishment of a complete time service, the first step toward the present daily time service conducted by the government. In 1870, he began the series of brilliant researches on the sun which have placed him at the head of authorities on that body. His scientific papers are very numerous and his series of magazine articles on "The New Astronomy" did much to acquaint the public with the rapid development of the science. In 1887, he was chosen to the important post of secretary of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and his recent years have been spent in experimenting with aeronautics.

Simon Newcomb is another who rendered yeoman service to the science.

Born in Nova Scotia, the son of the village schoolmaster, he lived to become one of the eight foreign a.s.sociates of the Inst.i.tute of France, the first native American since Franklin to be so honored; to win the Huygens medal, given once in twenty years to the astronomer who had done the greatest service to the science in that period, and to receive the highest degree from practically every American college.

In his autobiography he tells how, at the age of five, he began to study arithmetic, at twelve algebra, and at thirteen Euclid. At the age of eighteen, planning to make his way to the United States, he set out on foot, taught school for a year or so, and then attracted the attention of Prof. Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, by sending him a problem in algebra. The unusual apt.i.tude for mathematics which the boy possessed so impressed Prof. Henry, that he set him to work as a computer on the Nautical Almanac; but he was soon attracted to "exact,"

or mathematical astronomy, which became his life work. Some idea of its importance may be gained when it is stated that every astronomer in the world to-day uses his determinations of the movements of the planets and the moon; every skipper in the world guides his s.h.i.+p by tables which Newcomb devised; and every eclipse is computed according to his tables.

He supervised the construction and mounting of the equatorial telescope in the naval observatory at Was.h.i.+ngton, the Lick telescope, and Russia applied to him, in 1873, for aid in placing her great telescope.

A man of humor, sympathy and anecdote, he found, in the fall of 1908, that he was suffering from cancer, and hastened the work on the moon, which was to be his masterpiece. Ten months later, he was told that his course was nearly run--and his great work was still incomplete.

"Take me to Was.h.i.+ngton," he said, "I must work while there is time."

And there, lying in agony on his bed, for three weeks he dictated steadily to stenographers on a subject which required the utmost concentration. His indomitable will alone supported him, and a week after the last word had been written, came the end. Verily, there was a man!

The last of the great American astronomers whom we shall mention here is Edward Charles Pickering, whose name is so closely connected with the development of the great observatory at Harvard. Born at Boston, and educated at the Lawrence Scientific School, his first work was in the field of physics, but in 1876, he was appointed professor of astronomy and geodesy, and director of the Harvard observatory, which, under his management, has become of the first importance. His princ.i.p.al work has been the determination of the relative brightness of the stars, and many thousands have been charted. On the death of Henry Draper, the study of the spectra of the stars by means of photography was continued as a memorial to that great scientist, and the results obtained have been of the most important character, including a star map of the entire heavens. Other phases of the science of scarcely less importance have been carefully developed, and the work which has been done under Pickering's direction, is second to none in the history of the science.

Not satisfied with the Northern hemisphere, a branch has been established in Peru, in which the observatory's methods of research have been extended to the south celestial pole. So for eighteen years and more, it has kept ceaseless watch of the heavens, with an accuracy of which the world has hardly a conception. For this great work the scientific world must pay tribute to the genius and perseverance of Edward Charles Pickering.

The second department of science claiming our attention is that of paleontology. Here one of the most eminent of American names is that of Othniel Charles Marsh. A graduate of Yale and firmly grounded in zoology and kindred sciences by a course of study at Heidelberg and Berlin, he returned to the United States in 1866 to accept the chair of paleontology which had been established for him at Yale. The remainder of his life was devoted to the original investigation of extinct vertebrates, especially in the Rocky Mountain regions. In these explorations, more than a thousand new species of extinct vertebrates were brought to light, many of which possess great scientific interest, representing new orders never before discovered in America. So important was this work that the national geological survey undertook the publication of his reports, which formed the most remarkable contributions to the subject ever written in this country, attracting the attention and admiration of the whole scientific world.

a.s.sociated with Marsh as paleontologist for the Geological Survey was Edward Drinker Cope, whose work was second only to the older man's in importance. He also devoted much of his attention to the exploration of the Rocky Mountain region, and found that there, in the strata of the ancient lake beds, records of the age of mammals had been made and preserved with a fulness surpa.s.sing that of any other known region on earth. The profusion of vertebrate remains brought to light was almost unbelievable. Prof. Marsh, who was first in the field, found three hundred new tertiary species between 1870 and 1876, besides unearthing the remains of two hundred birds with teeth, six hundred flying dragons, and fifteen hundred sea serpents, some of them sixty feet in length. In a single bed of rock not larger than a good sized lecture room, he found the remains of no less than one hundred and sixty mammals.

It was this work which Prof. Cope took up and carried forward. Its importance may be appreciated when it is stated that among these remains are found examples of just such intermediate types of organisms as must have existed if the succession of life on the earth has been an unbroken lineal succession. Here are snakes with wings and legs, and birds with teeth and other snakelike characteristics, bridging the gap between modern birds and reptiles. The line of descent of the horse, the camel, the hippopotamus and other mammals has been traced to a single ancestor, the result being the proof of the theory of evolution.

The whole work of American paleontology has, of course, been along these lines. Aga.s.siz himself was a living and vital force in it, as were such men as Joseph Leidy and H. F. Osborne.

It is a remarkable fact that one of the few truly original and novel ideas the past century can boast, and the one which has had the deepest influence on geology, had its origin in the brain of an illiterate Swiss chamois hunter named Perraudin. Throughout the Alps, on lofty crags, great bowlders were often found, which had no relation to the geology of the region and which were called erratics, because they had evidently come there from a distance. But how? Scientists explained it in many ways, but it remained for the mountaineer to suggest that the bowlders had been left in their present positions by glaciers. The scientific world laughed at the idea, but ten years later, it was brought to the attention of Louis Aga.s.siz; he investigated it, became a convert, and saw that its implications extended far beyond the Alps, for these erratic bowlders were found on mountains and plains throughout the northern hemisphere. Aga.s.siz found everywhere evidences of glacial action, and became convinced that at one time a great ice cap had covered the globe down to the higher lat.i.tudes of the northern hemisphere. So came the conception of a universal Ice Age, now one of the accepted tenets of geology.

The dean of American geologists was Benjamin Silliman, who, at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, took up at Yale University the work which he was to carry on so successfully for more than fifty years. As an inspiring teacher he was scarcely less successful than Aga.s.siz at a later day. His popular lectures began in 1808 and soon attracted to New Haven the brightest young men in the country. Among them was James Dwight Dana, who was to carry on most worthily the work which Prof.

Silliman had begun.

James Dwight Dana was attracted to Yale by Prof. Silliman's great reputation and received there the inspiration which started him upon a scientific career. Three years after his graduation, he was appointed a.s.sistant to his former instructor, and two years later sailed for the South Seas as mineralogist and geologist of the United States exploring expedition commanded by Charles Wilkes. He was absent for three years and spent thirteen more in studying and cla.s.sifying the material he had collected. He then resumed his work at Yale, succeeding Prof. Silliman in the chair of geology and mineralogy. His work was recognized throughout the world as most important, and many honors were conferred upon him.

Another famous name in American geology is that of John Strong Newberry.

His name is connected princ.i.p.ally with the explorations of the Columbia and Colorado rivers. He was afterwards appointed professor of geology and paleontology at the Columbia College School of Mines, and took charge of that department in the autumn of 1866. During his connection with the inst.i.tution, he created a museum of over one hundred thousand specimens, princ.i.p.ally collected by himself, containing the best representation of the mineral resources of the United States to be found anywhere.

Among the pupils of Prof. Silliman who afterwards won a wide reputation was Josiah Dwight Whitney. Graduating from Yale in 1839, he spent five years studying in Europe, and then, returning to America, was connected with the survey of the Lake Superior region, of Iowa, of the upper Missouri, and of California, issuing a number of books giving the results of these investigations, and in 1865, being called to the chair of geology at Harvard.

Still another of Prof. Silliman's pupils was Edward Hitchc.o.c.k, whose life was an unusually interesting one. His parents were poor and he spent his boyhood working on a farm or as a carpenter, gaining such education as he could by studying at night. Deciding to enter the ministry, he managed to work his way through Yale theological seminary, graduating at the age of twenty-seven. It was here that he came under the influence of Prof. Silliman, and after a laboratory course and much field work, he was chosen professor of chemistry and natural history at Amherst College. He held this position for twenty years, and in 1845 was chosen president of the college, transforming it, before his retirement nine years later, from a poor and struggling inst.i.tution into a well-endowed and firmly established one. He had meanwhile served as state geologist of Ma.s.sachusetts, and completed the first survey of an entire state ever made by authority of a government.

The most important recent contribution to American geology has been the three volume work issued in 1904-5, under the joint editors.h.i.+p of Thomas C. Chamberlain and Rollin D. Salisbury. Both are geologists of wide experience, and their work presents the present status of the science interestingly and simply.

America has had her full share of daring and successful surgeons, and in the science of surgery stands to-day second to no nation on earth, but perhaps the most famous American surgeon who ever lived was Valentine Mott. Dr. Mott was descended from a long line of Quaker ancestors, and was born in 1785. His father was a physician, and Dr. Mott began his medical and surgical studies at the age of nineteen, first in New York City, and afterwards in the hospitals of London, where he made a specialty of the study of practical anatomy by the method of dissection.

At that time there was in this country a deep-seated prejudice against the use of the human body for this purpose, and the experience which Dr.

Mott secured in London, and which stood him in such good stead in after years, would have been impossible of attainment here. A year was also spent in Edinburgh, and finally, in 1809, Dr. Mott returned to America with an exceptional equipment.

His skill won him a wide reputation and he was soon recognized as one of the first surgeons of the age. His boldness and originality were exceptional, and his success was no doubt due in some degree to his constant practice throughout his life of performing every novel and important operation upon a cadaver before operating upon the living subject. To describe in detail the operations which he originated would be too technical for such a book as this, but many of them were of the first importance. Sir Astley Cooper said of him: "Dr. Mott has performed more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did live." He possessed all the qualifications of a great operator, extraordinary keenness of sight, steadiness of nerve, and physical vigor. He could use his left hand as skillfully as his right, and developed a dexterity which has never been surpa.s.sed.