PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA, NATURAL HISTORY, AND BOTANY, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, RIVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH THE ADDITION OF BRITISH EXAMPLES AND OCCASIONAL NOTES, BY THE ENGLISH EDITOR, NEW-YORK London: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, BY I. GOLD, SHOE LANE. IN the year 1789, the Trustees of the College of Philadelphia instituted a PROFESSORSHIP OF NATURAL HISTORY AND BOTANY. I was honoured with the appointment of teaching these branches of science, the first of which had never before been taught in the Institution*. Upon the union of the College with the University of Pennsylvania, in the year 1791, my former appointment was confirmed by the trustees of the united institution; and in the year 1796, I received a new mark of the attention of the trustees, by their appointing me to fill the chair of MATERIA MEDICA, which was rendered vacant by the resignation of the professor of that branch of medical science. The different branches of Natural History, particularly Zoology and Botany, have been my favourite studies, from a very early period of my life. The happiest hours of near sixteen years of cares, of difficulties, or of sickness, have been devoted to the cultivation of these interesting sciences. During this long period, I have never ceased to look forward, as I still look forward, with an ardent satisfaction, to the time, when Natural History shall be taught as an indispensable branch of science, in our university: when it shall cease to "yield its laurels to languages which are withered or dead, and to studies, that are useless or ignoble†." Several courses of lectures on Botany had formerly been delivered, in the College of Philadelphia, by Dr. Adam Kuhn, one of the pupils of the great Linnæus. + See Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania. Part I Int. p. vii. |