GOLDEN, CADWALLADER (1688-17 7 6), American physician, historian and colonial official, was born at Duns, Scot land, on Feb. 17, 1688. He graduated at the University of Edin burgh in 1705, devoting himself to scientific studies there and in London, and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1710. There he engaged in general mercantile business until after a visit to Great Britain in 1715, when he began the practice of medicine. He was induced to move to New York by Governor Hunter, who appointed him the first surveyor-general of the colony and master in chancery. Becoming a member of the provincial council in 1721, he served for many years as its president; and from 1761 until his death was lieutenant-governor. He was acting-governor when in 1765 the stamped paper to be used under the Stamp Act arrived in the port of New York; a mob burned him in effigy in his own coach in Bowling Green, and he was compelled to surrender the stamps to the city council, by whom they were locked up in the city hall until all attempts to enforce the new law were abandoned. Subse quently Colden secured the suspension of the provincial assembly by an act of parliament. He understood, however, the real temper of the patriot party, and in 1775, when the outbreak of hostilities seemed inevitable, he strongly advised the ministry to act with caution and to concede some of the colonists' demands. When the war began he retired to his country seat near Flushing, N.Y., where he died on Sept. 28, 1776. Colden was widely known among scientists and men of letters in England and America. He was a lifelong student of botany, and was the first to introduce in Amer ica the classification system of Linnaeus, who gave the name Coldenia to a newly recognized genus. He wrote several medical works of importance in their day, the most noteworthy being A Treatise on Wounds and Fevers (1765) ; he also wrote an elab orate work on The Principles of Action in Matter (1751), which, with his Introduction to the Study of Physics (c. 1756), his En quiry into the Principles of Vital Motion (1766), and his Reflec tions (c. 177o), mark him as the first of American materialists and one of the ablest material philosophers of his day. His His tory of the Five Indian Nations (1727, best ed. 190 2) is one of the most valuable accounts that have been preserved of the relations with these powerful tribes and of the expansion of the English fur trade to the west.