ence and coöperation, the efforts of the friends of common schools and popular education. His sympathies have been with those who have labored for the improvement of the schools of his native state prior to 1826, down to the present time. In 1838, he delivered a lecture before the American Institute of Instruction on the School System of Connecticut, in which, after an interval of nearly a quarter of a century, he points again to the absence of an institution for the education of teachers as the great defect in the school system of the state. In 1845, before the same association, he drew the Ideal of a Perfect Teacher. Thorough, accurate, and comprehensive knowledge, high religious character, deep, enthusiastic love of his work and faith in its results, a strong and clear intellect, a lively imagination, good taste and good manners constitute the indispensable elements of a teacher of the people. He has responded cheerfully to the call of the Superintendent of Common Schools to address Teachers' Institutes and Teachers' Associations, and has repeatedly lectured in the Hall of the House of Representatives, during the session of the Legislature, when any action was to be had in either branch concerning common schools. He has availed himself at all times of the lyceum and the popular lecture, as well as of the daily press, to apply the principles of science to the explanations of extraordinary phenomena of meteorology and astronomy, as well as to the advancement of domestic comfort and popular improvement generally. In an Essay read before the American Association for the advancement of Education, at New York in 1855, he showed, in a felicitous manner, that the whole drift and tendency of science in its inventions and institutions is democratic."

The labors of Prof. Olmsted, as a college teacher, during the last twenty years of his life, consisted in teaching astronomy by a text-book, and in three courses of lectures, experimental ones on natural philosophy and optics, historical ones on the progress of astronomical discovery, and theoretical ones on meteorology. His colleagues and friends have regarded him as born a teacher, as possessing a most happy union of several powers, the capacity to convey instruction with clearness, system, and elegance; the capacity to impress the pupil with the importance of the branches taught, the disposition to shrink from no labor necessary in preparing himself for teaching, and to require of the student that he master and reproduce the lessons conveyed to him. While many lec

turers prepare their lectures once for all, and then cease to improve them, he was constantly revising, elaborating, and almost constructing anew the courses on astronomy and meteorology, which he delivered annually to the senior classes. While many sow the seed and leave it uncared for, he accompanied his lectures with examinations, which, as I occasionally heard them, showed his great success in impressing the subject upon the hearer. He was a friend in general of strict examinations. At the examination for degrees, since the year 1851, when the system of printed papers was adopted, two papers have fallen to his share. The labor was great, but he constantly said that the value of the system more than made amends for the burden which he bore. On the whole, his course on meteorology was listened to with the most profit and pleasure. He may be regarded as, for our country, one of the leaders in this science, and some of his doctrines, as that on hail storms, on which he published an essay in 1830, show him to be both well read, and an original thinker upon the atmospheric phenomena.

We may add to all this, that he was ready to give private instruction to his pupils, if he found any who had an especial taste for the sciences which he taught. For a number of years, until his health forbade it and his eye sight began to fail, he was accustomed to gather his class around him on a bright autumn evening, and introduce them to the heavenly bodies. In this way he endeavored to train up a corps of practical observers, whose labors, when they should be scattered abroad over this vast country, would not be lost to science.

It gave him great pleasure, when students who had a peculiar fondness for his pursuits, especially in astronomy, passed beyond the bounds of ordinary attainment. There was a time, about the years 1837 and 1838 more particularly, when several persons made great proficiency in this direction. This was the time when David Stoddard constructed with his own hands the telescope which afterwards helped him, on the plains of Oroomiah, to preach the glory of God to Nestorians and Mohammedans. This was the time when that gifted, but short lived young man, Ebenezer P. Mason, blazed forth with such brill

iant promise before a world, which, alas! he was destined so soon to leave. None of Prof. Olmsted's pupils excited such hopes in him of a useful, honorable future, or accomplished so much during his brief life, as this remarkable young man. His preceptor encouraged him all he could, and when the body of the young poet-philosopher had wasted itself away, the older friend with pious hand built a monument to his memory. His tribute to Mason, under the title of the "Life and Writings of Ebenezer P. Mason," appeared in 1842.

Let me add, while speaking of the encouragement with which he aided the studies of his pupils, that the same spirit marked his intercourse with others, who were devoting themselves to science. The case of Mr. Redfield is here in point. Mr. Redfield was a man of independent thought, and needed no patron to lift him up. But it ought to be mentioned to the honor of Mr. Olmsted, that he discerned, at an early date, the signal abilities of this then unknown merchant in the field of meteorology, that he encouraged him by his friendship and by drawing him into scientific circles-that he embraced and admired his theory of storms, on which, principally, Mr. Redfield's reputation is founded; and that, when a year or two since death summoned away this estimable man, Prof. Olmsted prepared an affectionate tribute to his memory, which he pronounced before the American Association, at Montreal, in 1857.

While Prof. Olmsted regarded teaching in its broad sensethe diffusion and inculcation of science-as the work to which he was called, and to which all other works must be subordinate, he did not refuse to enter into the fields of investigation and observation. Of this, his numerous papers, which appeared in Silliman's Journal of Science, or were read before the American Association, may afford proof. But as he was especially active and zealous in searching into the phenomena and causes of shooting stars, no sketch of him could be complete, which failed to speak of his connection with these investigations.

In the night of November 12-13, 1833, between two and five o'clock, occurred one of the most brilliant showers of shooting stars of which there is any record. Prof. Olmsted, with many other observers, here and in various parts of the

country, was a witness to this unwonted phenomenon, which, as notices of it came in one after another, was found to have extended over a large part of this continent and the adjoining ocean. The observations were carefully collected by him, were sifted, and reduced to order, and the remarkable fact appeared, among other things, that several showers had been observed before, within forty years, on the same day of November. The results appear in a memoir published in the 26th volume of the American Journal. The general explanation which Prof. Olmsted offers in this memoir, is "that the meteors of Nov. 13 consisted of portions of the extreme parts of a nebulous body, which revolves around the sun in an orbit interior to that of the earth; but little inclined to the plane of the ecliptic; having its aphelion near to the earth's path; and having a periodic time of one hundred and eighty-two days, nearly." In the course of his essay, Prof. Olmsted considered it as made out that the shower was periodical, and had its origin beyond the limits of the atmosphere. These conclusions have been won for science, although his general explanation of the phenomenon has been shaken by the facts since established, that another distinct period occurs in August, and another still in April, and that brilliant displays of this celestial wonder have been occasionally noticed also at other times of the year, as in the month of October; and although it fails to account for the numerous shooting stars of the same description, which may be seen every clear night. At present, it is believed, no theory satisfies the men of science; but the fact is settled that matter, in masses larger or smaller, and combustible when it enters our atmosphere, is met by the earth on its course round the sun, the matter being engaged in a similar revolution, and that these masses recur with tolerable steadiness at certain fixed times of the year, the more noticeable of which are in April, August, and November.

In his researches into these phenomena, Prof. Olmsted had several collaborators, of whom I will only name Prof. Alexander C. Twining, who reached, independently, some of the same conclusions with him, and Mr. Herrick, now the Treasurer of Yale College, who gathered many new facts in

regard to showers of stars from records of all ages, back into the remote past, and established or confirmed other periodical returns of the phenomenon. But to Mr. Olmsted belongs the credit of having called the notice of philosophers to this important phenomenon, as well as that of having first, if we except the ill-defined claims of Chladni, published a theory involving its cosmical origin and periodical character. His researches excited great attention abroad and commanded the respect of some of the most eminent scientific men. Biot expressed himself thus in a communication to the French Academy, in 1836. "It is scarcely necessary for me to state that all the circumstances of position, direction, and periodicity peculiar to the meteors, of the 13th of November, have been collected and made known by Mr. Olmsted of America, in a very comprehensive and highly interesting work;" and he thanks him for having carefully collected and stated the observable elements of so curious a phenomenon. Olbers, the great astronomer of Bremen, praises him for his circumstantial description and collection of the particulars of the shower, and arrives at the same conclusion which Prof. Olmsted had adopted from the constant direction of the shower, that it did not participate in the rotation of the earth, but came from outer space into our atmosphere. And to mention but one testimony more, Humboldt, in the first volume of his Cosmos, speaks of the excellent description which Prof. Olmsted had given of the shower in November, 1833, and of his brilliant confirmation of Chladni's view that the phenomenon was of cosmical origin..

In his first memoir on the shooting stars, Prof. Olmsted says, that "the explanation of the cause of the meteors of November 13 may include that of the zodiacal light, although it is not responsible for it." Nothing since, so far as I am aware, has tended to settle the question whether the two phenomena have a close connection; but from this time the zodiacal light became a subject of interest in his mind; he often watched it; and the interest thus aroused here may have been the first moving cause to the important observations on this ap