26 Memorial of George Brozvn Goode. 



gradual development of the Museum. To Professor Henry American 

 science owes a debt which is but seldom realized and can hardly be exag- 

 gerated. It is difficult for anyone, even with the printed records before 

 him, to form an adequate idea of the conditions under which the Smith- 

 sonian Institution grew to its present stature, nor what unceasing vigi- 

 lance was required of its head to avoid the pitfalls which everywhere 

 beset its path in adolescence. Opinions, emphatic and divergent, were 

 abundant, in and out of Congress, as to the policy and methods deemed 

 desirable for the Institution. Men would have used the fund for a great 

 library, museum of art, or university. The original act by which it was 

 constituted was a compromise, leaving a door open for the advocates of 

 either opinion to modify the policy of the Institution should the time 

 come when any particular view could command a majority in the gov- 

 erning board. Professor Henr}^ was determined that the "increase and 

 diffusion of knowledge among men ' ' in the highest and broadest sense 

 of the words should be the object to be attained, and that nothing local 

 or special vShould absorb the funds or the energies of the Institution. 

 Such things as could and would be done by other agencies were not to 

 be attempted by the Smithsonian, but rather the things worth doing, 

 which, except for the aid given by the Institution, could not get done at 

 all. Those branches of activit}^ prescribed by the act creating the Insti- 

 tution, but which tended to outgrow a strict subordination and absorb 

 undue proportions of the income, were rigorously pruned and sternly 

 repressed. It seems strange to recall a time when free speech did not 

 exist in the capital of the nation, yet it is within my memory when so 

 great was the irritability of the proslavery element in Washington that 

 Professor Henry, with an eye single to the welfare of his beloved Insti- 

 tution, felt it necessary to warn foreign men of science invited to work or 

 lecture here that certain topics must not be touched upon, directly or 

 indirectly. Professor Henry knew that the resources of the Smithsonian 

 could not support a great museum or a great library and still carry out 

 the promotion of .science in the wider sense, which was his ideal aim. 

 He wished for a national museum and a national library, but only at 

 national expense. He approved of the far-reaching explorations and 

 collections which the genius of Professor Baird initiated and by untiring 

 labors promoted, but he did not wish the enormous mass of material thus 

 brought together to be a charge upon the slender funds of the Institu- 

 tion. His ])olicy was to distrilxite to other institutions of learning, 

 museums, and colleges, as soon as worked up, everything except a typical 

 series of the specimens, thus at once promoting research at other points 

 and economizing space and the expenses of preservation. Arrangements 

 were made with naturalists all over the country by which material in 

 their special lines of research was shipped to them as soon as received, 

 to remain indefinitely, until reported upon. The same policy led to 

 placing in the Corcoran Gallery of Art such objects of art .spared by the 



