REPOUT OF THE COUNCIL. 



MAY 27, 1879. 



Since the last report, May 28, 1878, the Academy has received 

 notice of the deaths of twelve members, as follows : six Fellows, 

 Jacob Bigelow, Caleb Cushing, Silas Durkee, J. B. S. Jackson, 

 John Clarke Lee, John M. Merrick, and B. F. Thomas ; three 

 Associate Fellows, W. C. Bryant, S. T. Olney, and George 

 B. Wood ; three foreign Honorary Members, Dove, Ritschl, 

 and Rokitanski. 



FELLOWS. 



JACOB BIGELOW. 



It is greatly to be regretted that the subject of the following brief 

 notice had not just enough of pardonable egotism and serviceable vanity 

 to induce bim to leave some record of himself in the shape of an au- 

 tobiography. His birth dated from the year in which the Constitution 

 of the United States was adopted. He lived into the last decade of 

 the century which is reckoned from that event. For sixty-seven 

 years he was a member of this Academy, and from 1847 to 1863 he 

 was its President. Sagacious, observant, conversant with men, an in- 

 telligent student of public affairs, a thoroughly capable man of busi- 

 ness, fond of social intercourse, eminent in more than one branch of 

 science, one of the best scholars the classical training of his time had 

 to show for itself, one of the earliest cultivators of the fine arts among 

 us, always active in his laborious profession, yet always with time to 

 spare for other and varied duties, a record of his life during the busy 

 threescore years which would leave an ample margin for the period 

 of immaturity and that of decline — a record such as he would have 

 made — would have been a precious bequest to posterity. Of this 

 crowded life I can offer but a few scanty hints and memories. 



Jacob Bigelow was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, February 27, 

 1787. His father, the Rev. Jacob Bigelow, who graduated at Harvard 

 College in 1766, was minister of Sudbury, dividing his time between the 



