Is it not, therefore, desirable to furnish some rallying point, some object sufficiently interesting to be compassed by common efforts, and thus to become the basis of an enduring, common interest? To produce these efforts, and to excite this interest, nothing, perhaps, bids fairer than a SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL. Hitherto nearly all our exertions, of this kind, have been made by medical gentlemen, and directed primarily to medical objects. We are neither ignorant nor forgetful of the merits of our various MEDICAL JOURNALS, nor of the zeal with which, as far as consistent with their main object, they have fostered the physical sciences. We are aware, also, that Journals have been established, _professedly_ deriving their materials principally from foreign sources; that our various literary Magazines and Reviews have given, and continue to give, some notices of physical and mathematical subjects, and that some of them seem even partial to these branches of knowledge: that various limited efforts have been made, and are still making, to publish occasional or periodical papers, devoted to mathematical or physical subjects, and that even our newspapers sometimes contain scientific intelligence. We are aware, also, that some of our academies and societies of natural history, either in Journals of their own, or through the medium of existing magazines, communicate to the public the efforts of their members in various branches of natural science. But all these facts go only to prove the strong tendency which exists in this country towards the cultivation of physical science, and the inadequacy of the existing means for its effectual promulgation. Although our limits do not permit us, however much inclined, to be more particular in commemorating the labours and in honouring the performances (often marked by much ability) of our predecessors and cotemporaries, there is one effort which we are not willing to pass by without a more particular notice; and we are persuaded that no apology is necessary for naming the Journal of the late Dr. Bruce, of New-York, devoted principally to mineralogy and geology. No future historian of American science will fail to commemorate this work as our earliest _purely scientific_ Journal, supported by _original American communications_. Both in this country and in Europe, it was received in a very flattering manner; it excited, _at home_, great zeal and effort in support of the sciences which it fostered, and, _abroad_, it was hailed as the harbinger of our future exertions. The editor was honoured with letters on the subject of his Journal, and with applications for it from most of the countries in Europe; but its friends had to regret that, although conducted in a manner perfectly to their satisfaction, it appeared only at distant intervals, and, after the lapse of several years, never proceeded beyond the fourth number.