But if it be applied to the
power and determination of American mind, professedly, or as in a
private capacity, devoted to the various classes of natural history
spoken of, it is not only unjust in a high degree, but an evidence of
overweening self-complaisance, imprecision of thought, or arrogance. No
trait of the American scientific character has been more uniformly and
highly approbated, by the foreign journals of England, France, and
Germany, than its capacity to accumulate, discriminate, and describe
facts. For fourteen years past _Silliman's Journal of Science_, though
not exclusively devoted to natural sciences, has kept both the
scientific and the popular intelligent mind of the public well and
accurately advised of the state of natural science the world over.
Before it, _Bruce's Mineralogical Journal_, though continued but for a
few years, was eminently scientific, _Cleaveland's Mineralogy_ has had
the effect to diffuse scientific knowledge not only among men of
science, but other classes of readers.
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