National Sciciilific and Juiticalional Iiistitttlions. 319 



To this period belongs also the promotion of experiments with the 

 electric telegraph by our Government. The line from Washington to 

 Baltimore was erected by means of an appropriation of $30,000, the pas- 

 sage of which w^as warmly urged \^y the President, who fifteen years 

 later wrote the following letter, full of historical reminiscences: 



Sherwood Fork.st, September i, /SjS. 

 To his Honoi- the mayor, and to the Honorable the Common Council of the City oj 



Neiv Yorfi: 



GenTi^EmEN : In consequence of my absence from this place, I did not receive 

 until to-day your polite invitation to be present at the festivities of to-day, and the 

 municipal dinner to be given to Cyrus W. Field, Esq., and others at the Metropoli- 

 tan Hotel to-morrow, in commemoration of the laying of the "Atlantic Cable." 

 To be present, therefore, at the time appointed is a thing impossible. All that I can 

 do is to express my cordial concurrence with you in according all prai.se to those 

 through whose iudomital^le energy this great work has been accomplished. 



When, in 1843, a modest and retired gentleman, the favored child of .science, 

 called upon me at the executive mansion, to obtain from me some assurance of my 

 cooperation with him in procuring from Congress a small appropriation to enable 

 him to test his great invention; and when at an after-day I had the satisfaction of 

 placing my signature in approval of the act making an appropriation of $30,000 to 

 enable him to connect Wa.shington with Baltimore by his telegraph wire; and when 

 at a still later day I had the pleasure, from the basement of the Capitol, to exchange 

 greetings with the Chief-Justice of the United vStates, who was at the Baltimore end 

 of the line, I confess that it had not entered my mind that not only was lightning 

 to become the messenger of thought over continents of dry lands, but that the same 

 all pervading agent was to descend into the depths of the ocean, far below the habi- 

 tations of living things, and over those fathomless depths to convey, almost in the 

 twinkling of an eye, tidings from nation to nation, and continent to continent. To 

 the great inventor of this, the greatest invention, is due the laurel wreath that can 

 never wither, and to those that have given it a habitation and a home in the waters 

 of the great deep all praise is due. 



With sentiments of high consideration, I have the honor to Ije, most respectfully 



and truly yours, etc. , 



John Tyi,er. 



President Polk served from 1845 to 1849. During this period was 

 organized the Smithsonian Institution, wdiich, though it bears the name 

 of a private citizen and a forei-gner, has been for nearly half a century 

 one of the principal rallying points of the scientific workers of America. 

 It has also been intimately connected with very many of the most impor- 

 tant scientific undertakings of the Government. 



Many wise and enlightened scholars have given to the Smithsonian 

 Institution the best years of their lives, and some of the most eminent 

 scientific men of our country have passed their entire lifetime in work 

 for its success. Its publications, six hundred and seventy in number, 

 which when combined make up over one hundred dignified vohimes, are 

 to be found in every important lilirary in the world, and some of them, 

 it is safe to say, on the working table of every scientific investigator iu 

 the world who can read English. 



