312 Moiwrial of George Piroivn Goode. 



bersliip, scientific and otherwise, including a large number of Govern- 

 ment officials; the other composed exclusively of professional naturalists. 



The purpose of each Avas the advancement of the scientific interests of 

 the nation, which seemed more likely to receive substantial aid now that 

 the money bequeathed by vSmithson was lying in the Treasury vaults, 

 waiting to l)e used. 



The National Institution under the leadership of Joel R. Poinsett, of 

 South Carolina, then Secretary of War, assisted by General J. J. Abert, 

 F. A. Markoe, and others, had a short but brilliant career, which endured 

 until the close of the Tyler Administration, and had an important influ- 

 ence on public opinion, bringing about in the minds of the people and 

 of Congress a disposition to make proper use of the Smithson bequest, 

 and which also did much to prepare the way for the National Museum. 

 The extensive collections of the National Institution, and those of the 

 Wilkes lixpedition and other Government surveys were in time merged 

 with those of the Smithsonian Institution, and having been greatly 

 increased at the close of the Centennial Exposition, began in 1879 to 

 receive substantial support from Congress. 



The Society of Geologists was not so prominent at the time, but it 

 has had a longer history, for in 1850 it became the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science. Although it dated its origin from 

 1840, it was essentially a revival and continuation of the old American 

 Geological Society, organized September 6, 18 19, in the philosophical 

 room of Yale College, and in its day a most important body. Its mem- 

 bers, following European usage, appended to their names the S5anbols 

 M. A. G. vS., and among them were many distinguished men, for at 

 that time almost every one who studied anj- other branch of science 

 cultivated geology also. 



The American Association prepared the way for the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, which was established l)y Congress in 1863, having 

 for its first president Alexander Dallas Bache, who in his presidential 

 address at the second meeting of the American Association, twelve years 

 before, had pointed out the fact that "an institution of science supple- 

 mentary to existing ones is much needed to guide public action in ref- 

 erence to scientific matters,"' and whose personal influence was very 

 potent in bringing that institution into existence. In advocating before 

 Congress the plan for the National Acadeni}' of Sciences, vSenator Sum- 

 ner avowedly followed the lead of Joel Barlow, the projector of the 

 National Institution in i8o6.- 



'Proceedings of the Ainerican Association for the Advancement of vScience, 185 1, 

 pp. 6, 48. 



= The idea of an Academy of Sciences with nnlocalizcd membership and, like the 

 Royal Society and the French Academy, holding advisory relations with the General 

 Government, appears to have been present in the minds of many of the early states- 

 men. Washington, in his project for a great national university, donbtless intended 

 to include everything of this kind. Joel Barlow and Thomas JefTenson at the begiU' 



