1866.] 279 [Peale. 



knowledging the receipt of the publications of the Society, 

 and from the Vaudois Society, stating deficiencies of the Pro- 

 ceedings. Also a communication from the Imperial Geologi- 

 cal Society of St. Petersburg, October 26, 18C6, inviting 

 scientific gentlemen and friends to the celebration of their 

 fiftieth anniversary on the 7th January next. 



Donations for the Library were announced from the Royal 

 Prussian Academy of Science ; from the Societies of Natural 

 Sciences of Vaudois, of the Geographical of Paris, of the Royal 

 Astronomical of London, and of the New Hampshire His- 

 torical ; from the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science ; from the Public Library of Boston, the American 

 Journal of Sciences ; from the Franklin Institute ; from Carl 

 Schinz, of Strasbourg ; from Dr. George B. Wood, of Phila- 

 delphia, and the Director of the United States Mint. 



Pursuant to appointment, Mr. Peale read an obituary notice 

 of the late Matthias W. Baldwin, a deceased member of the 

 Society, viz. : 



The life of a man like that of the subject of this notice, furnishes 

 a vast amount of matter, and exemplifies the results of character, 

 habits, and principles that are most useful, in their influences, on all 

 classes of society, and in all the relations of life; but the usages of 

 this Society do not authorize details, however desirable upon other 

 accounts, or however interesting to the immediate relatives of the 

 departed. A just record of the life and character of the deceased 

 is all that is aimed at in this Memorial. 



On the tenth day of December, 1795, in Elizabethtown, New .Jersey, 

 Matthias William Baldwin was born. Much the largest proportion 

 of his life was passed in the City of Philadelphia, in the vicinity of 

 which, at his country seat, Wissinoming, he died, on the evening of 

 October 7th, 1866, in the seventy -first year of his age. 



He was the son of William Baldwin, and an exemplary mother, 

 whose influence on his future life was all that could be desired, in 

 moral and religious example and precept. 



He had the misfortune to lose the first, in early childhood, but the 

 judicous training and industrious energy of the last, so far supplied 

 the loss, that no serious privation followed in the rearing of a family 

 of five children, two of whom survive at this time. 

 VOL. X. — 2m 



