1865.] 127 [Wood. 



The period in Dr. Bache's history which we have now reached, 

 may be considered as a resting-point, from which he may have looked 

 back with a feeling of satisfaction for time well spent and work well 

 done, but as yet with little consciousness of having filled a large 

 space in the public eye, or having done much that was obvious for 

 the general good. Hitherto he had been serving an apprenticeship 

 to the great business of life, and preparing himself for the works 

 which were to entitle him to rank among public benefactors, and to 

 earn for him a lasting name. The most important of these labors 

 were mainly professional, and have been fully considered in the me- 

 moir to which I have already once or oftener alluded. I shall speak 

 of them here, as a general rule, only so far as may be necessary to 

 keep the thread of the narrative unbroken ; dilating, however, upon 

 those points which especially connect him with this Society. I do 

 not mean to intimate that there was any sharp or precise line between 

 his earlier and later career; so far from this, I am even unable to fix 

 upon the year when the one may be said to have ended and the other 

 begun. But we may date the commencement of the second era from 

 the time when he had fully engaged in the work of revising the 

 United States Pharmacopoeia, had been made Professor of Chemistry 

 in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and was about to begin 

 the work of preparing the United States Dispensatory; between the 

 close of the year 1829 and the beginning of 1832, when he was 

 approaching his fortieth year, and had fairly entered into middle life. 



I shall treat first of his relations with this Society, with which he 

 was so long and so intimately associated. He was elected a member 

 on theStt of April, 18'2f3 For several years there is little evidence, 

 in the minutes of the Society, that he participated actively in its 

 proceedings otherwise than by attendance at its meetings; the only 

 office filled by him previously to the year 1825 being that of judge 

 of the annual election in January, 1822. He was too modest to 

 draw attention to himself by any premature display; so that, in 

 looking over the records, I have noticed only a single instance, dur- 

 ing the first five years of his membership, in which he appears to 

 have departed from his rule of silence; and, in this instance, it was 

 nothing of his own that he offered, but a paper by Mr. Henry Sei- 

 bert, containing the results of an analysis of a specimen of fluosilicate 

 of magnesia from New Jersey. In the regularity of his attendance 

 he was very remarkable, from the date of his election to that of his 

 decease; and certainly, during this long period, there was no other 

 member of the Society who was present at nearly so many meetings 



