38 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
1870. The amendment was accepted by the Academy on the 
following year and in 1872, upon the adoption of an amended 
constitution, 25 new members were elected, having been selected 
from a list of 29 names submitted by the Class of Mathematics 
and Physics, and 18 names submitted by the Class of Natural 
History. A resolution was adopted, however, that after 1872 
only five members should be elected at any one session of the 
Academy. 
The year 1870 was further marked by the important cir- 
cumstance, already mentioned above, that the Bache Fund be- 
came available. The first allotment from the income which 
it afforded was made in the following year, in connection with 
the magnetic survey of the United States. 
A committee was appointed this year to consider measures 
to secure the successful observation of the short transit of Venus 
of 1874. The Academy also expressed, in a resolution, its 
gratification at the appointment by the Government of the 
Argentine Republic of Dr. B. A. Gould, one of the original 
members of the Academy, as the director of the new national 
astronomical observatory at Cordoba. 
The second Vice-President of the Academy, William Chau- 
venet, died in December, 1870, and the office remained vacant 
until 1872, when Wolcott Gibbs was elected to succeed him. 
A committee to revise the constitution and the by-laws of the 
Academy in accordance with the act of Congress, approved 
July 14, 1870, amending the original act of incorporation, re- 
ported in 1871. This report was referred to the Council which 
in 1872 brought it again before the Academy. The constitution — 
and rules, as amended, were unanimously adopted on April 
* July 11, 1870. “On motion of Mr. Wilson, the Senate, as in Committee of the 
Whole, proceeded to consider the bill (S. No. 881) to amend the act to incorporate the 
National Academy of Sciences. It directs that the act to incorporate the National Academy 
of Sciences, approved March 3, 1863, be, and the same is hereby, so amended as to remove 
the limitation of the number of ordinary members of the Academy as provided in the act. 
“The bill was reported to the Senate without amendment, ordered to be engrossed for a 
third reading, read the third time, and passed.” (Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 
2d Session, part 6, p. 5437-) 
The bill passed the House without objection on July 14, 1870, and was approved 
July 15, 1870. ’ 
