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OF THE

FIVE INDIAN NATIONS

DEPENDING ON THE PROVINCE OF

NEW-YORK.

BY

CADWALLADER COLDEN.

Reprinted exactly from Bradford's New York edition, (1727.)

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One hundred and twenty-five copies Octavo.

Thirty copies Imperial Octavo.

No./>

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by

T. H. MORRELL,

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

Press of J. M. Bradstreet & Son.

INTRODUCTION.

T reflects little credit on New York that

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none of her fons have endeavored to present to the million readers of the State the life of Cadwallader Colden, a man whose scientific and philofophical mind, insuring him fame in any field of life that he might have selected, was devoted for nearly half a century to the development, interests and government of the colony of New York. But his labors are almoft forgotten, his learned works acceffible to few, his manuscripts, though safe in the New York Historical Society, acceffible to still fewer, and except to antiquaries and collectors, his very exiftence almost a myth. No public monument, no college or feminary of learning, recalls the memory of one who in electricity and other branches of natural philosophy was the valued affociate of Franklin, who correfponded with Linnæus, Gronovius and Bartram on Botany, with eminent phyficians in both hemifpheres on the science of medicine, with the

Earl

Earl of Macclesfield on Aftronomy and Philofophy, whofe reports to government ftand out amid the mafs of tedious official documents by the freshness, vigor and originality of their views, no less than by their fcientific value as treatifes.

Cadwallader Colden was the fon of the Rev. Alexander Colden, minifter of Dunfie,* in Scotland, but was born on the 17th February, 1688, in Ireland, where his mother was temporarily on a vifit. Defigned by his father for his own profeffion, young Colden was sent to the Univerfity of Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1705; but feeling little inclination for the pulpit, he proceeded to London and began the study of medicine, yet without difcontinuing the mathematical and scientific ftudies which had become fo attractive to him. In 1710, allured by the flattering accounts of William Penn's colony in America, where mild laws, a benevolent fyftem of polity and a fertile foil feemed to the young adventurer almost to promife a revival of the golden age, he came over to Pennsylvania, already the refidence of a maternal aunt, and there practifed phyfic with great reputation for five years.

He then revifited London, where he formed

* From an elegy by Geo. Robfon it would feem that he died Minifter at Oxname.

an

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