“When Benjamin Silliman, a 22-year-old lawyer completely unschooled in the sciences, was appointed to the first professorship of natural science at Yale University, he immediately set off for Philadelphia. To Silliman in 1802, Philadelphia ‘presented more advantage to science than any other place in our country.’ Soon thereafter William Maclure, ‘father’ of American geology and an early president of the Academy of Natural Sciences, became the dominant figure within Philadelphia's considerable population of naturalists. The Philadelphia circle justly serves as a focus for The Eagle's Nest: Natural History and American Ideas, 1812-1842, Charlotte M. Porter's study of early American forays into natural history.”
—New York Times Review of Books