122 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



In private life he was greatly and worthily beloved. Simplicity and 

 sweetness of spirit and mien, tender though tfulness for all around him, 

 with all the amenities and graces that go to constitute the Christian 

 gentleman, marked his daily intercourse, won for him troops of friends, 

 and made it hardly possible that he should have an enemy. In his 

 ecclesiastical relations, while loyal to his own Church, and steadfast in 

 his own convictions of truth and right, he lived in mutual esteem and 

 in the interchange of the kindest Christian offices with good men of 

 every denomination. 



Colonel James Duncan Graham, of the U. S. Engineers, was born 

 in Virginia. He entered the United States service as Third Lieutenant 

 of Artillery in the year 1817, was appointed a Captain (by brevet) of 

 Topographical Engineers, January 15, 1829, and rose in this corps by 

 the regular course of seniority to the grade of Lieutenant-Colonel ; he 

 was brevetted to this grade January 1, 1847, and obtained his actual 

 commission for it, August 6, 1861. Upon the consolidation of the two 

 corps of Engineers and Topographical Engineers, he received a colo- 

 nel's commission in the combined corps, which he held at the time of 

 his decease, December 28, 1865. 



His scientific labors have been for the most part either directly in the 

 line of military engineering duty, or incidentally connected therewith. 

 Of the former class were his labors upon the Northeastern Boundary 

 and Mexican Boundary Commissions, and upon the survey of the 

 Northern and Northwestern Lakes. He was very assiduous as an in- 

 structor in practical astronomy to the younger officers under his com- 

 mand, and was himself an admirable observer. The latitudes and longi- 

 tudes of the points upon our Northeastern Boundary were determined by 

 him and his subordinates with great precision. He often availed himself 

 of his travels in this line of duty to contribute largely to the advance- 

 ment of American geography, and his determinations are always very 

 accurate, though often made with apparently inadequate means. Thus 

 a large number of the most accurate positions yet determined of our 

 Lake ports, are due to his sextant observations made within ten years, 

 while he was in charge of the Lake Harbor improvements. 



Colonel Graham was an admirable example of a military astron- 

 omer, — a class to whom in every country a great deal of the progress 

 of astronomical geography is due. 



From the roll of our Foreign Honorary members it becomes our sad 

 duty to withdraw the names of Encke, Lubbock, Sir William Rowan 



