280 Memorial of George Brown (roode. 



the custod}- of the Conimissioner of Patents until 185S, when it was 

 transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, and l)ecame a part of the 

 present National Museum. 



In 1836 the patent vSystem was reorganized, and most of the methods 

 at present in use were put in operation. As it now stands, it is one of 

 the most perfect and effective in the world, and the Patent Office, judged 

 by the character of the work it performs, although, perhaps, not strictly 

 to be classed among the scientific institutions, is nevertheless entitled 

 to such a place by reason of its large and admirable corps of trained 

 scientific experts serving on the staff of examiners. ' 



The Administration of John Adams, beginning in 1797, was short and 

 turbulent. Political strife prevented him from making any impression 

 tipon our scientific history ; but it requires no research to discern the 

 attitude of the man who founded the American Academy and who drew 

 up the articles for the encouragement of literature and science in the 

 constitution of Massachusetts. 



Jefferson, as Vice-President, taking little part in the affairs of the 

 Administration, was at liberty to cultivate the sciences. When he came 

 to Philadelphia to be inaugurated Vice-President, he brought with him 

 a collection of the fossilized bones of some large quadruped, and the 

 manuscript of a memoir upon them, which he read before the American 

 Philosophical Society, of which he had been elected president the pre- 

 ceding year. 



' ' The spectacle of an American statesman coming to take part as a 

 central figure in the greatest political ceremony of our country and 

 bringing with him an original contribution to science is certainl)^" as 

 Luther has said, ' ' one we shall not soon see repeated. ' ' "^ 



In 1 801 began the Administration most memorable in the history of 

 American science. The President of the United States was, during the 

 eight years of his office, president of the American Philosophical Society 

 as well, and was in touch with all the intellectual activities of the period. 

 He wrote to a correspondent, "Nature intended me for the tranquil 

 pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight;" and to 

 another he said, ' ' Your first letter gives me information in the line of 

 natural history, and the second promises political news ; the first is my 

 passion, the last is my duty, and therefore both desirable." 



"At times of the fiercest party conflict," says lyUther, "when less 

 happily constituted minds would scarcely have been al)le to attend to 



' See Official Gazette, United States Patent Office, XII, No. 15, Tuesday, October 

 9, 1877; also articles in Appleton's and Johnson's Cyclopaedias. 



The history of the Patent Office has never been written ; a full account of its 

 work and of its influence upon the progress of American invention is greatly to be 

 desired. 



"" vSee Jefferson, A Memoir on the Discovery of Certain Bones of a Quadruped, of 

 the Clawed kind, in the Western I'art. of Virginia, in the American Philosophical 

 Transactions, IV, p. 246 (March 10, 1797); also F. B. Luther, Jefferson as a Natu- 

 ralist, in the Magazine of American History, April, 1885, pp. 379-390. 



