National Sciciilific and Edit ra/ /on a I Inslitiilions. 273 



account of the death of its projector, and of King James I, and the fall 

 of the Virginia Company. 



Soon after, in 1636, came the foundation of Harvard, then in 1660 

 William and Mary, Yale in 1701, the College of New Jersey in 1746, the 

 University of Pennsylvania in 1751, Columbia in 1754, Brown in 1764, 

 Dartmouth in 1769, the University of Maryland in 1784, that of North 

 Carolina in 1789-1795, that of Vermont in 1791, and Bowdoin (the col- 

 lege of Maine) in 1794. 



When Washington became President, oiie hundred years ago, there 

 were no scientific foundations within this Republic save the American 

 Academy in Boston ; and, in the American Philosophical Society, Bar- 

 tram's Botanic Garden, the private observatory of Rittenhouse, and 

 Peale's Natural History Museum, Philadelphia. 



Washington's own inclinations were all favorable to the progress of 

 science ; and Franklin, who would have been Vice-President but tor his 

 age and weakness, Adams, the Vice-President, and Jefferson, Secretary 

 of State, were all in thorough sympathy with the desire of their chief to 

 "promote as objects of primary importance institutions for the general 

 diffusion of knowledge." All of them were fellows of the American 

 Philosophical Society, and the President took much interest in its pro- 

 ceedings. The records of the society show that he nominated for foreign 

 membership the Karl of Buchan, president of the Society of Scottish 

 Antiquaries, and Doctor James Anderson. 



Washington's mind was scientific in its tendencies, and his letters to 

 the English agriculturists (Young, Sinclair, and Anderson) show him 

 to have been a close student of physical geography and climatology. He 

 sent out with his own hand, while President, a circular letter to the best 

 informed farmers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, 

 and Virginia, and having received a considerable number of answers, pre- 

 pared a report on the resources of the Middle Atlantic States, which was 

 the first of the kind written in America, and was a worthy beginning of 

 the great library of agricultural science which has since emanated from 

 our Government press. 



In a letter to Arthur Young, dated December 5, 1 791, he manifested 

 great interest in the Hessian fly, an insect making frightful ravages in 

 the wheat fields of the Middle States, and so much dreaded in Great 

 Britain that the importation of wheat from America was prohibited." It 

 was very possibly by his request that a committee of the Philosophical 

 Society prepared and printed an elaborate and exhaustive report, and 

 since its chairman was Washington's Secretary of State, it was practically 



' 111 an article recently published by Professor C. V. Riley, he sustains the popular 

 belief and tradition that Cecidomya was introduced about the time of the Revohition, 

 and probably by Hessian troops. He gives interesting details concerning the work 

 of the committee of the American Philosophical Societ)', and a review of recent 

 controversies upon this subject. See Canadian Entomologist, XX, p. 121. 

 NAT MUS 97, PT 2 18 



