For many of the alterations and omiffions there feems no folid reafon; the omiffion of the speeches is inconfiftent with the preface, in which the author at fome length defends their insertion, and we can hardly conceive it poffible that he retained the apology when he had made it unneceffary. That he should have reprinted it at the time without enlarging it from the acceffible matter afforded by the publication of Charlevoix' Hiftory of New France, in 1744, and the curious work of Lafiteau, fo full of matter relating to the Five Nations, is indeed furprifing, as he must have been aware of the labors of Mr. Smith, and the certainty that he would use these fources. Ofborne wrote, June 12, 1747, to Dr. Colden: "If you have any thoughts of making any further Edition (addition) to the Five Nations, I fhould be glad to have it as foon as poffible.. .. but should be glad if you would bring it as low as poffible and add fome of your neighboring Nations to it. General Oglethorpe has promised to give me great help for the other Indian Nations, and he was fo kind as to overlook your manufcript, and approved it very much." Colden, however, apparently never made any attempt to continue the History. He probably wrote expreffing his thanks to General General Oglethorpe, for Osborne, June 6, 1748, fays: "I will take care to pay your compliments to General Oglethorpe," a fort of proof that Colden was unaware of it till he received the General's thanks.* Having thus given the history of the work, and its editions, as far as known, we refume our brief sketch of the author. After the clofe of Mr. Burnet's adminif tration, Dr. Colden removed to Coldengham, and there devoted all the leisure he could command from his official duties to his favorite studies, and to a correfpondence with learned men in Europe and America. Among the refults of his correfpondence was the establishment of the American Philofophical Society, firft fuggefted by him. He studied the botany of his eftate, and finding a good bed of turf fuitable for fuel, made probably the first New York canal to bring it to a convenient place of depofit, although the work may have had fome more important but now forgotten object. In 1732 he drew up an important document-"The State of the Lands in the Prov * Osborne gives an infight into the pecuniary matters of the edition, ftating that it coft him £120, and that he had fold only 300 copies, had 200 on fale, and 500 on hand. ince ince of New York,* and in 1738 made, in form of a reply to certain queries of the Board of Trade, another communication on the Province and its Boundaries.† During the adminiftration of Gov. Cofby he was not in favor, and took little part in public affairs. Although in Smith's History of New York his name appears among the Councillors who ordered the proceedings against Zenger, the official Journal omits his name for the year following October 1734. In the fummer of 1740 he was appointed one of the Commiffioners for "marking out and fettling the Boundaries between the Province of the Maffachusetts Bay and the Coloof Rhode Island Eastward,"§ for which his geographical and fcientific attainments fo well fitted him. In this and a fimilar Commiffion he prefided with fuccefs.|| ny His retirement from political struggles was not spent in idleness. Never lofing fight of his profeffion, he contributed valuable papers on the diseases of the colony. He was one of the first to fuggeft the cooling regi * Published in O'Callaghan's Documentary History, i, 247. Printed in the Colonial Documents, vi, 121. || Ib. 469. men men in the treatment of fevers. He published a tract on the cure of cancers, another on the medical properties of the Bortanice, or Great Water Dock, and oppofed the prevalent method of treating fmall-pox. In 1741 and the following year, New York city was defolated by a malignant fever, resembling the yellow fever, which at a later day committed fuch fearful ravages. Dr. Colden communicated to the Common Council his views on the causes of the disease, which he confidered local, and fuggested efficient means of guarding against it. A vote of thanks attested the appreciation fet by the city on his valuable recommendations.* In 1742, as we have feen, he wrote the second part of his Hiftory of the Five Nations. The Acta Upfalenfia, for 1743, contains his "Plantæ Coldinghamiæ in Prov. Nov. Eboracenfi fpontanæ crefcentes, quas ad methodum Linnæi fexulem obfervavit Cadwallader Colden," the great Botanic Contribution of Colonial New York, addreffed to Linnæus, and redeeming us from total inattention to that fcience in which Pennsylvania and Canada had won honors. *His treatife is in the American Medical and Philofophical Regifter. But But the work to which he devoted the greatest labor, and many years of his life, was "An Explication of the First Causes of Action in Matter, and of the Cause of Gravitation." New York, 1745; London, 1746, 8vo, 75 pp.* "In this work," fays Mr. Verplanck, "far from aiming, as has been fuppofed, at the overthrow of the Newtonian fyftem, he proceeds the very fame path with the father of the mathematical philofophy, and endeavors merely to advance a few fteps beyond the conclufions where Newton had paufed. Newton had himself exprefsly denied that he thought gravity a power innate, inherent and effential to matter; and in a letter to Dr. Bently, had faid that gravity must be caufed by an agent acting conftantly according to certain laws." This agent, and its mode of action, it is the object of Colden's effay to point out, and he brings arguments to fhow that light is that great moving power. His treatife was enlarged and published at London, in 1751, under the title of "The Principles of Action on Matter," to which he added, “An Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions." This work was fo rapidly *The London edition was got out from an early copy, before the package fent by Dr. Colden arrived. taken |