In 1824, he returned to Philadelphia, and commenced his career as
a practitioner of medicine. He seems immediately to have resumed
his place and labors in the Academy of Natural Sciences, which, in
the next year, was deprived of the active services of some of its most
efficient members, by the removal of Messrs. Maclure, Say, Troost,
Lesueur, and others, to New Harmony, whither they went to participate
in the benevolent but ill-starred social experiment of Robert
Owen. It was a pleasant dream of a good heart and a visionary
brain, and has now faded away from every one but the originator,
who holds it still in his extreme old age with the same fervor as in
his ardent youth; but then it had many firm believers. So enthusiastic
was Maclure especially in its advocacy, that he declined about this
period to assist the Academy in the erection of a new Hall, from a
conviction that, in the reorganization of society, living in cities would
be abandoned, and their edifices thus left untenanted and useless. One
cannot imagine a body of more simple-hearted, less worldly, and less
practical men, than the Philadelphia naturalists who went to reconstitute
the framework of society on the prairies of Indiana; and it is
impossible to repress a smile at tbeir Quixotism, even while one heaves
a sigh for the bitterness of their disappointment.
They left in 1825, and the first papers of Morton were read in 1827.
His main interest still seems to have been an Geology. In the year
mentioned he published an Analysis of Tabular Spar from Bucks
County, and the next year some Greological Observations, based upon
the notes of his friend, Mr. VanuxemT About this time his attention
was turned to the special department of Palaeontology, by an examination
of the organic remains of the cretaceous formation of New
Jersey and Delaware; and with this his active scientific life may be
regarded as commencing.
Some few of the fossils of the New Jersey marl had been noticed
by Mr. T. Say, and by Drs: Harlan and Dekay; but no thorough investigation
of this interesting topic was attempted until Morton assumed
the task. He labored in it industriously, being assisted in the
collection of materials by his scientific friends. Three papers on the
subject were published in 1828, and from this time the series was
continued, either in Silliman’s Journal or the Journal of the AcaAnd
when with heedless step, too near
I tenjpt destruction’s brink,
Deep, deep, within my soul I hear
Thy voice, and backward shrink.
The poisoned shaft, by thee controlled,
Speeds swift and harmless b y ;
But, when the days of life are told,
Thou smitest— and we die!
demy, until it closed with the fourteenth paper in 1846, In 1834,
the results then obtained were collected and published in a volume
illustrated with nineteen admirable plates.*
This book at once gave its author a reputation and status in the
scientific world, and called forth the warm commendations of Mr.
Mantell and other eminent Palaeontologists. I t traces the formation
in question along the borders of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico
from New Jersey to Louisiana, following it by the identification of
its organic remains. The great body of the work is original, scarcely
any of the species enumerated having ever been noticed before. Subsequent
researches enabled him to add considerably to this collection,
and, among others, to describe a species of fossil crocodile (Q. clavi-
rostris) entirely new and differing considerably in structure from its
congeners hitherto known. In regard to the fossils of the cretaceous
series, he is still the principal authority.
Nor was he neglectful of the other branches of Natural Science,
although too well aware of the value of concentrated effort to peril
his own success, by a too wide diffusion of his labors. Still he maintained
a constant interest in the operation of every department of
the Academy, and watched its onward progress with solicitude and
satisfaction. To the Geological and Mineralogical, and especially to
the Palaeontological collection, he was a liberal contributor. Among
the papers read by him before the Academy was one in 1831 on
“ some Parasitic 'Worms,” another in 1841, on “ an Albino Racoon,”
and a third in 1844, on “ a supposed new species of Hippopotamus.”
This animal, which has been called II. minor vel Liberiensis, was entirely
unknown to Zoology until described by Morton, who received
its skull from Dr. Goheen, of Liberia, and at once recognized its
diversity from the known species, j" Notwithstanding the published
opinion of Cuvier, that the field of research was exhausted in regard
to the Mammalia, our gifted townsman was enabled to add an important
pachyderm to the catalogue of Mammalogy, and that too
from the other hemisphere.
Let it not be supposed that, amid these absorbing topics of research,
he relaxed for a moment his attention to his professional pursuits.
On the contrary, he was constantly and largely engaged in practice,
and, at his decease, was one of the leading practitioners of our city.
Neither did he allow himself to fall behind his professional colleagues
in the literature of medicine. He was among the first to introduce
on- this side the Atlantic the physical means of diagnosis in
* Synopsis of the Organic Remains of the Cretaceous Group of the United States. By
Samuel George Morton. Philadelphia: Key and Biddle. 1834.
t The Academy has recently (January 1852) received a specimen of it.