vice for science by the issue of the editio princeps of the Atharva-Veda, and that before he was thirty.
In September, 1869,—that is to say, in the very month in which began the first college year of President Eliot's administration,—Whitney was called to Harvard. It reflects no less credit upon Mr. Eliot's discernment of character and attainments than upon Mr. Whitney's surpassing gifts that the youthful president should turn to him, among the very first, for aid in helping to begin the great work of transforming the provincial college into a national university. The prospect of losing such a man was matter of gravest concernment to all Yale College, and in particular to her faithful benefactor, Professor Salisbury. Within a week the latter had provided for the endowment of Mr. Whitney's chair upon the ampler scale made necessary by the change of the times; and the considerations which made against the transplanting of the deeply rooted tree had, unhappily for Harvard, their chance to prevail, and Whitney remained at New Haven.
It was during his studies under Mr. Salisbury, in May, 1850, that he was elected a member of the American Oriental Society. Mr. Salisbury was the life and soul of the Society, and, thanks to his learning, his energy, and his munificence, the organization had already attained to "standing and credit in the world of scholars." Like him, Mr. Whitney was a steadfast believer in the obligation of which the very existence of these assembled societies is an acknowledgment,—the obligation of professional men to help in "co-operative action in behalf of literary and scientific progress;" and, more than that, to do so at real personal sacrifice.
