Abstract
Two recent issues of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (No. 1, vol. 86, 1942, and No. 3, vol. 87, 1943) contain some interesting historical material and illustrations. The first, bearing the title “The Early History of Science and Learning in America with Especial Reference to the Work of the American Philosophical Society during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, contains papers read before the Society at its mid-winter meeting in February 1942, and is inspired by the fact that that year saw the close of two hundred years of activity by the Society, which was organized by Franklin in 1743. It certainly seems a good plan to prepare for such a celebration as a bicentenary by the preliminary presentation of papers of this kind, in which various contributors deal with the Society's early activities in a wide range of fields, including, among others, agriculture, meteorology, climatology, engineering, vertebrate palæontology, and so on ; there is also an interesting biographical study of James Logan (1674-1751) and a carefully documented account of a memoir by Rafinesque that has been generally overlooked..
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Early Science in the United States. Nature 152, 657 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152657b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152657b0