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Chapter Five Eaton’s Agricultural and Geological Surveys This being the greatest undertaking of the kind, I believe, hitherto known in America, I feel a deep interest in it. You perceive that my reputation is much at stake upon it. It will probably be the most conspicuous situation that I shall ever be placed in; and the responsibility the greatest. A strip of more than three hundred miles in length, which is forever to be travelled over by the learned of all countries in canal, stage-boats, etc. I am to examine minutely and decide upon the rocks, minerals, soils, and plants. —Amos Eaton, 1822 Governor DeWitt Clinton’s pardon permitted Amos Eaton to return to New York State in 1819. Eaton then devoted the remainder of his life to becoming the preeminent lecturer and recorder of the natural history of the northern United States. After a brief sojourn in New Haven to repair the deficiencies of his selfeducation , Eaton carried glowing recommendations from New York’s celebrated Dr. Samuel Mitchill, Yale’s botanist Dr. Eli Ives, and the venerated editor of the American Journal of Science and the Arts, Professor Benjamin Silliman. Eaton was well prepared and well situated to take advantage of a rare scientific opportunity to investigate the geological record then being exposed by the digging of the Erie Canal. His prominence in the Albany scientific community was vastly enhanced when he became acquainted with the founders of the New York State Agricultural Society, all past or current members of the canal commission. An Inventory of the Patroon’s Property In 1820, after lecturing in New England towns in the spring and teaching botany at the Castleton Medical Academy in the summer, Eaton returned to Troy and undertook his first lucrative scientific research assignments. The president of the Agricultural Society, Stephen Van Rensselaer, had commissioned geological sur- Eaton’s Agricultural and Geological Surveys 99 veys to be conducted for Albany County and Rensselaer County, both of which happened to belong to his personal estate. Eaton and Romeyn Beck were selected to conduct the first survey. Beck enlisted one of his Albany Academy students to assist in the survey work, a lad named Joseph Henry. (Henry, who would become a world-renowned experimental physicist and later serve as the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, initially came to the prep school to pursue his interest in poetry and drama.)1 Eaton reveled in the opportunity to exercise his talents for geological field work and systematic organization of facts, and six weeks of tramping around Albany County in August and September 1820 yielded a highly acclaimed publication before the end of the year. Writing from New York City in early December, Dr. Mitchill praised Beck, his former student: “I have perused with close attention the geological survey of Albany County made for the Agricultural society by yourself and Mr. Eaton.” Mitchill’s effusive congratulations spoke directly to the criteria of utility that Eaton had espoused in his lectures and scientific articles: “The facts . . . are so arranged and digested as to lead to useful and practical conclusions. The description of the rocks, and of the formation of soil by their disintegration and crumbling , appears to have been executed with fidelity as well as labour and skill. . . . Your publication is a great model for imitation; and I hope it will prompt other persons to engage in similar pursuits.” Waxing on, Mitchill speculated: “What can be more interesting than such deductions as you have made from the analysis of arable soil, on the modes of culture and the crops to be raised? Your notices of the organic Remains [fossils], and your sketch of the Helderberg [an escarpment that defines the southeastern boundary of the Mohawk valley], are particularly agreable [sic] to me.”2 More important than Mitchill’s pleasure was Van Rensselaer’s satisfaction at the result. By skillfully and sensibly rendering technical information, Eaton had avoided that brand of fanciful landscape description so popular among his contemporaries. He was a serious, practical-minded thinker about the structure, placement, and meaning of rocks, fossils, natural vegetation, and cultivated crops, and he employed just the blend of ordinary fact and sophisticated analysis best suited to appeal to Van Rensselaer’s vision of the ideal landholding gentlemancitizen . Eaton’s enthusiasm and apparently boundless energy suggest that he felt rejuvenated by his new career, but bouts of severely poor health during the winter of 1820–21 brought home the reality that he was not a...

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