318 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



The importance of the survey, always appreciated by the mariner, 

 was recently impressed upon the general public, by the essential 

 service which it rendered during the war of the rebellion. Its accu- 

 rate charts and sailing directions guided our squadrons along the 

 Southern coast ; its officers accompanied and piloted them in the 

 attack upon every stronghold ; the superintendent himself was person- 

 ally called into frequent consultations over plans of attack or defence ; 

 besides serving upon an important confidential commission, to which 

 various projects for improving the art of war were referred, and also 

 as a member of that great voluntary association for the relief of 

 imminent wants and mitigation of the soldier's suffering, the Sanitary 

 Commission. Indeed Mr. Bache may be ranked among the victims 

 of the service ; for it was when, overwhelmed with other public labors, 

 he planned, at the request of the Governor of the State, a line of defences 

 for his native city of Philadelphia, and was personally superintending 

 their construction, that his health gave way under the first indications 

 of the cerebral disease which not long afterwards arrested his labors, 

 gradually and peacefully withdrew him from the outer world, and 

 nearly three years afterwards terminated his invaluable life. He died 

 on the 17th of February, 1867, in the sixty-first year of his age. 



The amount and value of Mr. Bache's labors and public services 

 would be much under-estimated if we omitted to state that he was like- 

 wise, while at the head of the Coast Survey, the Superintendent of 

 "Weights and Measures, in which capacity he completed the work, 

 begun by Mr. Hassler, of constructing accurate standards for distribu- 

 tion among the several States of the Union ; — that he was one of the 

 Commission appointed to examine the condition of the Lighthouses 

 of the United States, bore a leading part in the organization of the ad- 

 mirable system now in operation, and continued to be an influential 

 member of the Lighthouse Board in which the original Commission 

 was merged ; that he was the President of the National Academy of 

 Sciences recently chartered by Congress ; — and, finally, that he was 

 one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, named in the act 

 of incorporation in 1846, and was continued in this important trust by 

 successive re-elections until his death. To him probably more than to 

 any other member of the Board the credit is due of shaping the policy 

 of the establishment, of retrieving initial mistakes, and of securing the 

 appropriation of the income of this most important trust mainly to the 

 advancement of science. 



