74 
DR. HERMANN AUGUST HAGEN 
The loss of the building can scarcely be considered a calamity, since it 
would probably have taken fire at some future time, when the contents of 
the rooms below would be much more valuable. The building has been 
from the first a source of much trouble and expense, and should not have 
been erected. The Smithsonian Institution is a cosmopolitan establishment, 
and should not be burthened with the support of a local Museum and a 
large building. Congress will, I think, in due time take the Museum and 
the building off our hands, and leave the income of the Smithsonian fund 
to be entirely devoted to the advancement of science. I remain, etc., 
Joseph Henry. 
About this loss of mine I published the following statement, 
which I find in a paper that appeared a few weeks after the confla¬ 
gration, and contained some fragments of the manuscript that had 
escaped the fire 1 : “Unfortunately, I had retained no copy. An¬ 
ticipating a voyage to Europe early in the spring, I had hoped to 
see the manuscript go through the press before that time, and, hurry¬ 
ing to get it ready, did not stop to have it copied. . . . Except the 
fragments which I publish here, I have absolutely nothing in hand 
now, and the whole work will have to be done over again,” etc. 
The loss did not, in the end, turn out to be a loss to science. 
During a journey to Europe which I undertook soon after it had 
happened, I gained a great deal of information in the museums I 
visited, and that proved a benefit to the work when I reproduced 
it afterwards. The volume appeared in January, 1869, and in the 
Preface, signed by me in April, 1868,1 do not even find any mention 
of the conflagration. 
XI DR. HERMANN AUGUST HAGEN 
Hermann August Hagen was born on May 30, 1817, in Konigs- 
berg, Eastern Prussia, and died in Cambridge, Mass., November 9, 
1893. 
I made Dr. Hagen’s acquaintance on my way to North America, 
in the spring of 1856, an acquaintance which soon became a life-long 
friendship. 2 I encouraged Hagen to publish a work on the Neu- 
roptera of North America, and, during my residence in the United 
1 Proc. Ent. Soc. Philadelphia, April, 1865, p. 224 (26, 1865). 
2 Compare my “ Introduction,” p. 2. 
