_Early Geology in Philadelphia._—The oldest scientific society is the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, started by the many-sided Benjamin Franklin in 1769, and which has published since 1771. Up to the time of the founding of the Journal in 1818, there had appeared in the publications of this society thirteen papers of a geologic nature, nearly all small building stones in the rising geologic story of North America. The only fundamental ones were Maclure’s Observations of 1809 and 1817. Later, in this same city, there was organized another scientific society that came to be for a long time the most active one in America. This was the Academy of Natural Sciences, started in 1812 with seven members, but it was not until 1817 and the election of William Maclure as its first president that the work of the Academy was of a far-reaching character. Here was built up not only a society for the advancement of the natural sciences and publications for the dissemination of such knowledge, but, what is equally important, the first large library and general museum. William Maclure (1763–1840), correctly named by Silliman the “father of American geology,” was born and educated in Scotland, and died near Mexico City. A merchant of London until 1796, when he had already amassed “a considerable fortune,” he made a first short visit to New York City in 1782. In 1796 he again came to America, this time to become a citizen of this country and a liberal patron of science. About 1803, single-handed and unsustained by government patronage, Maclure interested himself most zealously and efficiently in American geology. In 1809 he published his Observations on the Geology of the United States, Explanatory of a Geological Map. This work he revised “on a yet more extended scale,” issuing it in 1817 with 130 pages of text, accompanied by a large colored geological map. _Silliman, the Pioneer Promoter of Geology._—In 1806 when Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864) began actively to teach chemistry and mineralogy, all the sciences in America were in a very backward state, and the earth sciences were not recognized as such in the curricula of any of our colleges. Silliman gave his first lecture in chemistry on April 4, 1804. In the summer of that year, Yale College asked him to go to England to purchase material for the College, and great possibilities for broadening his knowledge now loomed before him. As Silliman himself (=43=, 225, 1842) has told the interesting story of his sojourn in England and Scotland, it is worth while to restate a part of it here.