700 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



The relations of the Academy to the public in those early days were 

 absolutely different from the aloofness and reticence which prevail to- 

 day. The aid of outsiders was deliberately sought for, and the results 

 were communicated to the newspapers of the day. The records for 

 January 31, 1781, show that "The Reverend Samuel Williams, having 

 been directed by the Council to prepare an invitation to the public 

 to communicate to the Academy any experiments, observations and 

 productions of nature or art, adapted to the ends of its institution ; 

 and to lay the same before the Academy at the next meeting for their 

 approval, in order to its publication ; reported as follows : 



" The Academy have the pleasure to inform the public that they have 

 received the following communications, viz." Then follows a list of 

 papers submitted at -the meeting. Notices of meetings were required 

 to be published. 



Our associate, Abner C. Goodell, has collated in a note in the edition 

 of the Province Laws which he edited, a few facts relative to the pro- 

 ceedings which took place prior to the passage of the act incorporating 

 the Academy. It appears that on the 21st of March, 1776, a resolve 

 was passed in the Continental Congress recommending to the "assem- 

 blies, conventions, and councils or committees of safety " of the several 

 colonies to " take the earliest measures for erecting and establishing in 

 each and every colony, a society for the improvement of agriculture, 

 arts, manufactures and commerce, and to maintain a correspondence 

 between such societies, that the rich and numerous natural advantages 

 of this country for supporting its inhabitants may not be neglected." 



So far as our own society is concerned, John Adams claimed to have 

 first suggested its organization, in the course of a conversation with 

 Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, at a dinner given in 1779, by the corporation 

 of Harvard College in honor of Chevalier de la Luzerne, the French 

 ambassador, and his suite. In his recollections, written thirty years 

 after the event, Mr. Adams describes how he enlisted the services of 

 Dr. Cooper in the propagation of his idea and plan, which was done so 

 effectually that as he says " the first Legislature under the new Con- 

 stitution adopted and established it by law." In this statement his 

 memory served him false. We have already seen that the act was 

 passed before the new Constitution came into operation. 



In a "country dependent principally upon agriculture," to adopt the 

 language of the person who described the seal of the Academy, before 

 the days of the application of electricity, for power, light or heat ; 

 before the development of the steam engine, whether of the station- 

 ary or locomotive, type ; the modes of life, the methods of business, 

 the opportunities for scientific investigation, the subjects to be in- 



