286 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
its Philadelphia session in November, 1881, is, in the opinion of the academy, of 
sufficient importance to be referred to a committee of chemists, members of this 
academy, with the request that they give Dr. Collier’s results and methods a 
careful consideration, and report at their early convenience the conclusions to 
which they come.” 174 
The President, William B. Rogers, appointed as the com- 
mittee Benj. Silliman, Samuel W. Johnson, Charles F. Chandler 
and J. Lawrence Smith. Not long after the session closed, the 
attention of the Commissioner of Agriculture, George B. Loring, 
was called by the President to the fact that the Academy had the 
sorghum experiments under consideration, and Mr. Loring 
thereupon transmitted certain documents for the use of the com- 
mittee, with the remark that “if this reference involves a scien- 
tific investigation of the sorghum question he will be greatly 
obliged for the report.” At the same time, the committee was 
enlarged by the appointment of Wm. H. Brewer, C. A. Goess- 
man and Gideon E. Moore as additional members. The last 
two were not members of the Academy. 
At the April session of the succeeding year, 1882, an abstract 
of the report of the committee was read before the Academy, 
and the first draft of the report itself was also submitted. The 
complete report was transmitted to the Commissioner of Agri- 
culture in the following November. Mr. Loring refers to the 
document in his report for 1882 in the following terms: 
“ At the request of the chemist of the department, I submitted the sorghum 
analyses and work of his division to the National Academy of Sciences on the 
30th of January last for investigation by that body. A committee appointed for 
that purpose entered upon their work with great zeal and energy, and their 
report, which was laid before me, was, on July 21, withdrawn formally by 
the secretary of the academy ‘for such action as the academy may deem neces- 
sary.’ On the 15th of November current, the president of the academy presented 
to me the final report of that institution, a long and elaborate document, contain- 
ing a review of the history of the sorghum industry for twenty-five years, a state- 
ment of the scientific investigations made in this country and in Europe into the 
quality of sorghum and maize as sugar producing plants, a careful examination of 
™ Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1881, p. 19. This paper will be found on pages 64 and 65 of 
the report of the committee of the Academy on sorghum. For the full title of the latter 
see the footnote on page 287. 
