PERCIVAL, JAMES GATES (1795-1856), an American writer of many-sided activity, but chiefly remembered by his verses, was born at Berlin, Connecticut, on 15th September 1795, and studied at Yale, graduating in 1815, and taking a medical degree in 1820. His life was straitened by poverty and divided among a variety of occupations. He was by turns an army surgeon, professor of chemistry at West Point, a recruiting surgeon at Boston, geological surveyor of Connecticut (writing a Report published in 1842), and State geologist of Wisconsin, where he died at Hazel Green, 2d May 1856. The intervals of these employments were filled up with literary work of a miscellaneous kind. An edition of his collected poems appeared at Boston in 1859 (2 vols. 8vo). Some of his miscellaneous and patriotic verses hold a high place in American poetry.