BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF JOSERII HENRY. 155 



of tlie Society for the Advancement of Education, in 1855; a Trustee of 

 Princeton College, and of Columbian University, also of tlie Corcoran 

 Gallery of Art, in which the Smithsonian Institution deposits its art 

 collections; Visitor of the Government Uospital for the Insane; Presi- 

 dent of the Philosophical Society of Washington ; President of the 

 National Academy of Sciences at Yv^ashiugton. For many years a mem- 

 ber of the Light-House Board, to which he gave gratuitous and invalu- 

 able services as Chairman of its committee on experiments, he added for 

 the last seven years the chairmanship of the board itself, in his adminis- 

 tration no sinecure. Advice and investigation were sought from hij3, 

 from time to time, by every department of Go\-ernment. All were sure 

 that his advice was never biased by personal interest; and his sound 

 judgment, supported by spotless character, was greatly deferred to. 



AYe have said that in coming to Washington a career of investigation 

 was exchanged for a life of administration. It should rather be said that 

 his investigations thereafter took a directly practical turn, as his mind 

 was brought to bear upon difQcult questions of immediate importance 

 which were referred to him by Government or came in the course of 

 ofdcial duty. In the light-house service alone his timely experiments 

 upon lard-oil lighting, and the firmness with which he pressed his con- 

 clusions into practice when sperm-oil became dear, has. already saved 

 more than a million of dollars; the adaptation of mineral oil to the lesser 

 lights made another great saving; and the results reached by his recent 

 investigations of the conditions ^^hich influence the transmission of 

 sound and their application to acoustical signaling are not to be valued 

 by the saving of money only. 



It was in the prosecution of these last investigations, over a year ago, 

 and probably in consequence of exposure in them, at the light-house 

 station on Staten Island, that an intimation of the approaching end of 

 these labors was received. Yet a few months more of riseful life were 

 vouchsafed to him, not free from sulieriug, but blessed with an unclouded 

 mind and borne with a serene spirit; and then, at midday on the 13th 

 of May last, the scene was closed. 



At the sepulture of his remains (on the IGth) and afterward, it was 

 generally remarked at Washington that never before had the funeral of 

 a private citizen called forth such sense of loss, such profound demon- 

 strations of respect and affection. 



It is not for us to assign Professor Henry's place among the men of 

 science of our time. Those who do this will probably note that his 



