26. Opercular Valves of Balanus crenatus, three times natural size. 27. Trichotropis arctica. 30. Fusus scalariformis. ARTICLE XXXVII.—Biographical Memoir of William C. Red field; by Professor DENISON OLMSTED, L.L.D., of Yale College. [From an Address delivered before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Montreal, August 14th, 1857.] Gentlemen of the Association. SINCE last we met, the Destroyer has been very busy in our ranks. Besides other beloved and respected associates, our earliest and our latest Presidents have suddenly vanished from our midst;— Red field, who was the first to suggest the idea of the American Association on its present comprehensive plan, and the first to preside over its deliberations, and Bailey who, we fondly hoped, would occupy the same distinguished position on the present occasion. From the vision of both, as we humbly trust, the veil which permits us here to see only through a glass darkly, is removed, and the grand laws of Nature, and the infinitessimal no less than the infinite in God's works, are revealed to them in the clear light of heaven. With Mr. Redfield my acquaintance has been long and intimate. I was conversant with his earliest researches on the subject which is so closely associated with his name, and I have been constantly a witness of his untiring self-sacrificing labors in the cause of science, through all the subsequent years of his life. I respected him as a man, I admired him as a philosopher, I loved him as a friend. We miss him here, always the earliest to come and the latest to depart. We miss his gentle tones, his kindly greetings. We miss still more the radiance which his clear mind cast upon our pathway up the hill of science. I am thankful for the opportunity of presenting before this learned assembly a synopsis of his scientific labors. Some brief notice, also, of his personal history may be acceptable, not only as to satisfy the wishes of his friends, but for the benefit of his example, which, I trust, will especially commend itself to the self-taught votary of science, and to all who are engaged in the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, both as an incentive and a model. A life passed in the ordinary walks of business, or in the quiet of philosophical research, affords little of that romantic incident which lends a charm to biography; still we think the life of Mr. Redfield affords an interesting and instructive theme for contemplation in a three-fold point of view,-as affording a marked example of the successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, -as happily illustrating the union, in the same individual, of the man of science with the man of business, and as exhibiting a philosopher, whose researches have extended the boundaries of knowledge, and greatly augmented the sum of human happiness. William C. Redfield was born at Middletown, Connecticut, on the 26th of March, 1789. He was of pure English descent both by the father's and mother's side. His father from a natural love of adventure, chose in early youth a sea-faring life, and afterwards followed the seas as a profession to the time of his death, which happened when this, his eldest son, was only thirteen years old. His early training, therefore, devolved chiefly on his mother, who was a woman of superior mental endowments, and of exalted Christian character. The slender pecuniary resources of the family would not allow young Redfield any opportunities of school education beyond those of the common schools of Connecticut, which, at that time, taught little more than the simplest rudiments-reading, spelling, writing, and a little arithmetic; and all access to the richer treasures of knowledge seemed to be forever denied him, when, at the early age of fourteen, he was removed to Upper Middletown, now called Cromwell, and apprenticed to a mechanic, whose tasks engrossed every moment of his time except a part of his evenings. These brief opportunities, however, he most diligently spent in the acquisition of knowledge, eagerly devouring every scientific work within his reach. He was denied even a lamp for reading by night, much of the time during his apprenticeship, and could command no better light than that of a common wood fire in the chimney corner. Under all these disadvantages, it is evident that before he was twenty-one years of age he had acquired no ordinary amount and variety of useful knowledge. During the latter part of his apprenticeship he united with other young men of the village in forming a debating society under the name of "The Friendly Association," with which was connected a sinall but growing library. To this humble literary club, Mr. Redfield always ascribed no small agency in inspiring him with a love of knowledge, and a high appreciation of its advantages; and during his future years, he nursed and liberally aided by his contributions this benefactor of his youth. Fortunately for young Redfield, a distinguished aud learned physician, Dr. William Tully, fixed his residence in the same village, and generously opened to him his extensive and well. selected library; and what must have been equally inspiring to youthful genius, Dr. Tully furnished him with a model of an enthusiastic devoted to knowledge, and of a mind richly stored with intellectual wealth. The modest youth who first presented himself as a suppliant for the loan of a book from the Doctor's library, was soon recognized as a congenial spirit, and was admitted to an intimate friendship, which lasted to the day of his death. Dr. Tully has favored us with the particulars of his first acquaintance with our friend. On his application for a book to occupy such moments as he could redeem from his daily tasks, the Doctor, being then ignorant of his acquirements or his taste, opened different cases of his library, submitting the contents of each to his selection. Among a great variety of authors, that which determined his choice was Sir Humphry Davy's Elements of Chemistry. As this was one of the earliest systematic works that contained the doctrine of Chemical Equivalents, a subject then considered as pecularly difficult, and one understood by few readers of the work, the Doctor had little expectation that his young inquirer after knowledge, would either understand or relish it. In a short time he returned the book, and surprised the Doctor by evincing a thorough acquaintance with its contents, and expressing a high satisfaction, in particular, with the doctrine of chemical equivalents, which he said, he had then met with for the first time. Some time before young Redfield reached the end of his apprenticeship, his widowed mother had married and removed to the state of Ohio. He was no sooner master of his time than he set out on foot to pay her a visit in her new home, distant more than seven hundred miles. It was a formidable undertaking, in that early period before the age of steamboats and railways, and when a large part of the way was covered with dense forests, with hardly an open path even for the pedestrian. Stage coaches, indeed, ran on the nearer portions of the route, but these were too expensive for the slender finances of our young adventurer. Accompanied, therefore, by two other young men, he shouldered his knapsack and commenced the arduous journey. Every evening he noted down the incidents and observations of the day. This journal is now in my possession, and I have purused it with deep interest for the graphic sketches it contains of the countries he passed through, then mostly new settlements, and for the indications it affords of those powers of observation, which afterwards led to the development of the laws of storms. The style of composition is far superior to what might reasonably have been expected from one who had enjoyed so few literary advantages, evincing two qualities for which Mr. Redfield was always distinguished-good sense and good taste. The sketches of Western New York, and of Northern Ohio, taken while the sites of Rochester and Cleveland were dark and gloomy forests, and Buffalo was a mere hamlet, possess no ordinary degree of historical interest. Instead of a "Lake Shore" road, traversed by the iron horse, as at present, our young pedestrians could find no better paths in which to travel over the southern side of Lake Erie, than to course along the beach. Yet in twenty-seven days they made good their journey, having rested four days on the way, making an average of about thirty-two miles per day. After passing the winter with his friends in Ohio, he resumed his way homeward on foot and alone, returning by a more southern route, through parts of the states of Virginia, Maryland and Pensylvania. We shall soon see to what valuable account he afterwards turned the observations made on these early pedestrian tours, in tracing the course as well as originating the project, of a great railway connecting the Hudson and the Mississippi rivers. Returning to his former home in 1811, Mr. Redfield commenced the regular business of life. No circumstances could seem more unpropitious to his eminence as a philosopher, than those in which he was placed for nearly twenty years after his first settlement in business. A small mechanic in a country village, eking out a scanty income by uniting with the products of his trade the sale of a small assortment of merchandize, Mr. Redfield met with obstacles which in ordinary minds would have quenched the desire of intellectual progress. Yet every year added largely to his scientific acquisitions, and developed more fully his intellectual and moral energies. Meanwhile his active mind left its impress on the quiet community where he lived, in devising and carrying out various plans for advancing their social comfort and respectability, in the improvement and embelishment of their streets, school houses and churches, and in promoting the interests of the literary club, from which he himself, in early youth, had derived such signal advantages. From deep domestic trials which afflicted him about the year 1820, he had recourse for solace both to the word and the works of God. It was soon after one of the severest of these trials, that his attention was first directed to the subject of Atlantic Gales. On the 3rd of September, 1821, there occurred, in the eastern part of Connecticut, one of the most violent storms ever known there, and long remembered as the "great September Gale." Shortly after this, Mr. Redfield being on a journey to the western part of Massachuset's, happened to travel over a region covered by marks of the ravages of the recent storm. He was accompanied by his eldest son, then a young lad, who well remembers these early observations of his father, and the inference he drew from them. At Middletown, the place of Mr. Redfield's residence, the gale commenced from the southeast, prostrating the trees towards the northwest; but on reaching the northwestern part of Connecticut, and the neighboring parts of Massachussetts, he was surprised to find that there the trees lay with their heads in the opposite direction, or towards the southeast. He was still more surprised to find, that at the very time when the wind was blowing with such violence from the southeast at Middletown, a northwest wind was blowing with equal violence at a point less than seventy miles distant from that place. On tracing further the course and direction of prostrated objects, and comparing the times when the storm reached different places, the idea flashed upon his mind that the storm was a progressive whirlwind. A conviction thus forced upon his mind after a full survey of the facts was not likely to lose its grasp. Amid all his cares, it clung to him, and was cherished with the enthusiasm usual to the student of nature, who is conscious of having become the honored medium of a new revelation of her mysteries. Nothing, however could have been further from his mind, than the thought that the full development of that idea, would one day place him among |