SIMMS, Jeptha Root, author, born in Canterbury, Connecticut, 31 December, 1807; died in Fort Plain. New York, 31 May, 1883. His father was a hat-manufacturer. The son was educated at an academy in a neighboring town. In 1829 he began the retail dry-goods business in New York city, but, his health failing after three years, he removed to Schoharie county, New York, and entered into business there in 1832, but failed in 1834. For a few years after 1842 he filled the office of toll-collector for the New York and Erie canal at Fultonville, and for nine years he was ticket-agent for the New York Central railway at Fort Plain. His spare hours were employed in writing historical and other works, besides which he collected and labelled a large assortment of fossils, many of them rare, and sold them for $5,000 to the state of New York for the Geological museum at Albany. He was a corresponding member of the Oneida historical society, and rendered it much aid in collecting funds for the erection of the monument on the battlefield of Oriskany. He was a rapid writer and a voluminous contributor to the popular press throughout the state. He published "History of Schoharie County, New York" (Albany, 1845); "The American Spy, Nathan Hale" (1846) ; "Trappers of New York" (1850); and "The Frontiersmen" (2 vols., 1882-'3). He also composed several poems, Fourth-of-July orations, and lectures on different topics, which he delivered at various places in the central counties of New York.--His nephew, Joseph, physiognomist, born in Plainfield Centre, Otsego County, New York, 3 September, 1833, attended the academy at West Winfield, Herkimer County, New York, several terms. During four more he was employed in teaching, and in 1854 he began to lecture on physiognomy and physiology. From childhood the bent of his mind toward the study of character by external signs had shown itself in scanning and measuring the features of his companions. He was graduated at the medical department of New York university in 1871, after devoting himself somewhat to surgery, but more to making and promulgating new discoveries in physiognomy. In pursuit of his study he afterward explored the United States, Canada, and part of Mexico, and continued his observations in Europe, Egypt, Nubia, Algiers, Morocco, Syria, , Arabia, and Palestine. He has lectured with success in this country and abroad. From 1881 to 1884 he delivered scientific lectures in Melbourne, in Sydney, and in the Australasian colonies. In 1884 he gave up lecturing and visited Europe again, collecting new facts and preparing material for works on physiognomy and physiology. He has published a "Physiognomical Chart" for recording and reading character (Glasgow, 1873); "Nature's Revelations of Character" (London, 1874; several eds. in New York); a "Book of Scientific Lectures" on physiology and physiognomy (London, 1875); " Health and Character" (San Francisco, 1879); and "Practical and Scientific Physiognomy" (1884).