xxx Centennial Anniversary 



To some of the results of its labors I have already sufficiently 

 adverted. I must add that too high a value can hardly be set on 

 the Statistical Account of New Haven by President D wight, as a 

 study of an American town in the formative period of American 

 government. It was republished, a few years ago, by the city 

 authorities in its year book. A census of New Haven was also 

 taken by a committee of the Academy early in the century, the 

 results of which are on file in our archives, and well merit future 

 publication. The collection of statistics from all the towns in the 

 State would probably have been achieved, had President Dwight 

 lived ten years longer, and what was accomplished will be of the 

 greatest importance whenever a history of Connecticut is written 

 that deals, from the standpoint of the sociologist, with the charac- 

 ter of her people and her institutions. 



In 1836, when the two hundredth anniversary of the founding 

 of New Haven was approaching, the Academy voted to appoint 

 one of its members to prepare a historical address for the occa- 

 sion, and took an active part in providing for its proper celebra- 

 tion. The address by Professor Kingsley, which Avas its main 

 feature, was a careful and masterly production, and the Academy 

 also procured, partly at its own expense, the striking of a set of 

 medals to commemorate the day. 



In 1873, the necessity of a better map of the State than any yet 

 produced was made the subject of discussion at several of our 

 meetings. The result was a memorial from the Academy to the 

 General Assembly for a new topographic survey, and a public 

 agitation of the question, out of which came the very excellent 

 typographical atlas of Connecticut, published in 1893 by the col- 

 laboration of the United States Geological Survey and a Commis- 

 sion appointed by the State, of which the chairman was the present 

 President of the Academy. 



Provision was made by the Academy in 1799 for keeping at its 

 expense a meteorological register, and the results contained in its 

 archives, when combined with some records of an earlier and 

 others of a later date, made by other observers at New Haven, 

 constitute a history of the weather which is nearly complete from 

 1779 to the present hour.* 



* See the Yale Book, I, 335. 



