intimacy, entertained so high an opinion of an essay on animal secretion, drawn up by Dr. Colden, that he read it before the Royal Society. After some residence in London, Dr. Colden returned to Scotland, where he married a lady of a respectable Scotch family of the name of Christie, and embarked with his bride for America, in 1716.

In 1718 he settled in the city of New-York, where his mathematical knowledge procured him the appointment of surveyorgeneral of the colony from Governor Hunter, the friend and correspondent of Swift, from whom he soon after received the additional appointment of master in chancery. The state of society in this country, which did not yet allow of the regular subdivision either of labour or of professional study, rendered this last appointment less remarkable than it might otherwise appear to a reader of the present day. Dr. Colden's general knowledge and habits of business soon qualified him for the able discharge of this office.

On the arrival of Governor Burnet, in 1720, he was appointed one of the council, in which station he bore a very important part in all the public affairs of the province. About this time he obtained a patent for a large tract of land about nine miles from Newburgh, in the state of New-York, which was designated in the patent by the name of Coldingham, and is still in the possession of his lineal descendants. Hither he retired in 1755, and devoted himself for several years to scientific and agricultural pursuits. In 1761 he was appointed lieutenant governor, which office he held until his death, and was frequently, for considerable periods, at the head of the provincial government, in consequence of the death or absence of several governors of the colonies, and his administration is memorable for many charters of incorporation of institutions of public utility in the city of New-York.

During those commotions which preceded the revolution, he supported the government, of the mother country with great firmness; and in the tumults which took place in the city of NewYork, in consequence of the stamp act, although then in his seventy-eighth year, he manifested all the vigour and decision of youth, and finally prevailed in defeating for the time the efforts of the whig party. Upon the return of Governor Tryon, in 1775, he gladly retired from the cares of government to a seat on Long

Island, where he spent the short remainder of his life. He died in the eighty-ninth year of his age, September 28th, 1776, with great composure and resignation.

Governor Colden was a scholar of various and extensive attainments, and of very great and unremitted ardour and application in the acquisition of knowledge. When it is considered how large a portion of his life was spent in the labours or the routine of public office, and that, however great might have been his original stock of learning, he had, in this country, no reading public to excite him by their applauses, and few literary friends to assist or to stimulate his inquiries, his zeal and success in his scientific pursuits will appear deserving of the highest admiration.

His attention was early directed to the vegetable productions of this country, and a description of several hundred American plants was drawn up by him according to the Linnæan system, and communicated to Linnæus, who published it in the Acta Upsalentia. Under his instruction his daughter became very distinguished for her proficiency in this study, and a plant of the tetandrous class, first described by this lady, was called by Linnæus, in honour of her, Coldenia. He also wrote a history of the prevalent diseases of this climate, which is still in manuscript, and left a long series of observations on the state of the thermometer, barometer, and winds. Nor was he inattentive to the improvement of the healing art, after he had relinquished the practice of that profession. "If," say the editors of the American Medical and Philosophical Register, "he was not the first to recommend the cooling regimen in cure of fevers, he was certainly one of its earliest and warmest advocates, and opposed with great earnestness the then prevalent mode of treatment in the small pox." In the autumn of 1741 and 1742, a malignant fever, similar in its aspect to that since denominated yellow fever, desolated the city of New-York. Dr. Colden communicated his thoughts to the city corporation on the causes and most efficient means of guarding against this distemper, in which tract he seems to have inclined to the opinion since held by the champions of domestic origin. He also published a treatise "on the cure of cancers;" an essay "on the virtues of the Bortanice, or Great Water Dock," and some "observations upon an epidemical sore throat,” which

spread over our continent in 1735, and the succeeding years. All these tracts, originally published in different fugitive forms, have been republished by Mr. Carey in his valuable repository of early American scientific and political tracts, the " American Museum." He also published the "history of the five Indian nations," of which there have been two or more editions; the first, 8vo. London, 1747, and a second in 2 vols. 12mo. London. This work is still of the highest authority in every thing that relates to our North American Indian history and antiquities.

But the work to which he had devoted the greatest labour, and which occupied several years of his life, was his treatise on the cause of gravitation," which was printed in this country in a small 12mo, and afterwards much enlarged by the author, and republished in London in 4to, in 1751, under the title of "the principles of action in matter.'

In this work, far from aiming, as has been supposed, at the overthrow of the Newtonian system, he proceeds in the very same path with the father of the mathematical philosophy, and endeavours merely to advance a few steps beyond those conclusions where Newton had paused. Newton had himself expressly denied that he thought gravity a power innate, inherent, and essential to matter; and in a letter to Dr. Bentley had said, that “gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial I leave to the consideration of my readers." This agent and its mode of action it is the object of Colden's essay to point out, and he brings a great body of ingenious argument, grounded upon the various phenomena of planetary motion, to show that light is that great moving power, and that it acts through the medium of an elastic ether investing the planetary bodies, and alone possessing the power of causing reaction, a property which he denies to exist in inert matter. It is worthy of observation that Colden seems, from philosophical speculation and observation, to have arrived at nearly the same conclusions to which the philosophers of the Hutchinsonian school were led by their interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures, and what they have termed the Mosaic philosophy. To the last edition of this tract is appended "an introduction to the doctrine of Fluxions," in the course of which he removes the objections raised against that doctrine by Bishop Berkely, and

shows that the principles of that branch of mathematics are strictly geometrical. During the whole of his life he kept up a frequent correspondence with the philosophers and scholars of Europe, particularly with Sir Isaac Newton, with Linnæus, with the younger Gronovius, Drs. Potterfield and Whytte, of Edinburgh, Dr. Fothergill, and the celebrated Earl of Maccles field, who was equally distinguished as a lawyer and a mathematician, the whole of which valuable correspondence is still in the possession of his family.

He also maintained an uninterrupted correspondence with Dr. Franklin, while the latter was engaged in his electrical experiments; and in this series of letters the whole train of thought by which he was led to those discoveries is from time to time communicated to Dr. Colden. A great body of manuscripts in the possession of his grandson, on various points of mathematical, botanical, classical, metaphysical, and theological learning, in addition to the works published during his life, afford ample proof of the extent and variety of his knowledge, and the strength, the acuteness, and the versatility of his intellect.

With all this propensity to abstract speculation, he was remarkable for his habits of dexterity in business, and attention to the affairs of ordinary life.

A mind thus powerful and active could not have failed to produce great effect on the character of that society in which he moved; and we doubtless now enjoy many beneficial, although remote effects of his labours, without being always able to trace them to their true source.

V.

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SPIRIT OF MAGAZINES.

Account of a Familiar Spirit, who visited and conversed with the Author in a manner equally new and forcible, showing the Carnivorous Duties of all Rational Beings, and the true end of Philosophy.

[From the Reflector.]

CERTAINLY there is no possible speculation from which the understanding may not reap some advantage. When people deny the utility of certain obscure branches of knowledge, they deny it, not from the use, but from the abuse, of those branches; for knowledge is infinitely various; some of it is for practice, some for communication, some for avoidance; and it is as well to be truly acquainted with trifles, in order that you may really know them for such. The two rocks upon which inquiry is apt to split, are superficiality and superstition-extremes equally hurtful to knowledge from the seductive confidence into which they draw unwary minds. But real knowledge on any subject is real utility: it is only for want of knowing, that we do not make the proper application of knowledge. Chesterfield, for instance, is said to have understood the graces properly;-nothing can be more unfounded; he could talk about them a great deal, and could practise a great many, but in not properly understanding their nature and uses, he did not perceive they were trifles; and thus he split upon the superficial rock. Cardan, on the other hand, had a great turn for abstruse speculation, and was thought to be the profoundest man of his time; but his fancy and bad nerves uniting, drove him into all sorts of fantastic inquiries: he applied his knowledge to the nonentities of secret magic, forgetting that the proper secret for his discovery was that of social utility and an even mind;-and thus he split upon the superstitious rock.

But even those magnanimous sciences, so well denominated the occult, would never have been abused as they have, had not their greatest professors been the last men who understood them properly. The emptiness of their knowledge might have been discovered from the noise they made about it, and the uselessness it exhibited. They studied these sciences just as pedants study books-with much learning and no wisdom; and whatever the Cabalists may say to the contrary, I will venture to affirm that the Great Secret was understood neither by Peregrinus, nor Cor VOL. IV. New Series.

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