THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 325 



Smithson's money, which amounted to over half a million dollars, 

 and later to three quarters of a million, a great fortune in that day of 

 small things, was deposited in the United States Treasury, the gov- 

 ernment afterwards agreeing to pay perpetually six per cent, interest 

 upon it. 



In the fundamental act creating the institution, congress, as above 

 stated, provided that the President and the members of his cabinet 

 should be members of the institution, that is, should be the institution 

 itself, but that nevertheless it should be governed by a board of regents, 

 composed of the Vice-President and Chief Justice of the United States, 

 three regents to be appointed by the president of the senate (ordinarily 

 the vice-president), three by the speaker of the house of representa- 

 tives, and six to be selected by congress; two of whom should be resi- 

 dents of the District of Columbia, and the other four from different 

 states, no two being from the same state. The fundamental act further 

 provides that the secretary of the institution already defined shall also 

 be secretary of the board of regents. The museum is primarily to con- 

 tain objects of art and of foreign and curious research; next, objects 

 of natural history, plants, and geological and mineralogical specimens 

 belonging to the United States. Provision is also made for a library, 

 and the functions of the regents and of the secretary were denned. 



The preamble of this bill states that congress has received the prop- 

 erty of Smithson and provided ' for the faithful execution of said trust 

 agreeable to the will of the liberal and enlightened donor. ' It will thus 

 be seen that the relations of the general government to the Smith- 

 sonian Institution are most extraordinary, one may even say unique, 

 since the United States solemnly bound itself to the administration of 

 a trust. Probably never before has any ward found so powerful a 

 guardian. 



The first meeting of the regents occurred on September 7, 1846, and 

 in the autumn of the same year they elected as secretary Joseph Henry, 

 then a professor at Princeton, known for his extraordinary experiments 

 on the electromagnet, and other subjects relating to electricity. Under 

 his guidance the institution took shape. Its work at first consisted, in 

 the main, of the publication of original memoirs, containing actual 

 contributions to knowledge, and their free distribution to important 

 libraries throughout the world ; to giving popular lectures in Washing- 

 ton, publishing them, and distributing them to libraries and indi- 

 viduals; stimulating scientific work by providing apparatus and by 

 making grants of money to worthy investigators, cooperating with other 

 government departments in the advancement of work useful to the 

 general government, etc. These were the principal methods employed 

 by Henry to carry out the purposes of Smithson, for the increase and 

 diffusion of knowledge. Here, too, were initiated certain studies which 



