92 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



extraordinary thing that so young a society as this should have 

 adopted the Emersonian method and hitched its wagon to a 

 star, by taking as its model the Royal Society, the oldest and 

 greatest of all the scientific societies of the world, and it has 

 steadily pursued this method and conducted its meetings and its 

 purposes after the same fashion. In one respect, however, it 

 has departed from the course of the Royal Society, in that it has 

 retained not only the biological and the physical sciences, but 

 also the humanities. Accordingly, we have with us always a 

 number of men who are distinguished in other branches than 

 science, properly so-called. Any of you that can be present on 

 our Thursday afternoons or the annual joint meetings will, 

 I am sure, be delighted and pleased with the fine papers that are 

 read during that session of the society. 



Among the early members that Franklin gathered around him 

 he mentions by name a physician, a botanist, a mathematician, 

 a mechanician and, under one extraordinarily vague but compre- 

 hensive title, one " general natural philosopher." While the 

 others are mentioned by name, the name of this extraordinary 

 genius is buried, unfortunately, in oblivion. We have always had 

 very close relations, naturally, with the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, and from it has grown very largely our membership. 

 Moreover, the very first Secretary of the Philosophical Society 

 was the energetic Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, 

 William Smith, who, on one occasion, for an alleged libel upon 

 Quakers was thrown into jail, and, it is absolutely asserted, taught 

 students through the bars of the jail. Moreover, my immediate 

 predecessor in the presidential chair was a distinguished chemist 

 who is now the Provost of the University and a member of this 

 society, Professor Edgar F. Smith. 



In 1769, occurred an event of the greatest scientific importance, 

 the transit of Venus. David Rittenhouse, who was the astron- 

 omer of the society, imported some instruments from England 

 and also for the observation constructed a clock which, after 

 144 years, still stands upon our walls and marks with precision, 

 from which no appeal can be taken, the twenty minutes allowed 

 to each paper. 



