312 Memorial of Gcoroc Ih'ou v/ Goodc. 



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

 ment officials; the other composed exclusively of professional naturalists. 



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

 the nation, which seemed more likel}^ to receive substantial aid now that 

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

 waiting to be 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 l^rilliant career, which endured 

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

 ence on public opinion, bringing aljout 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 Expedition 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 vSociet}^ 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 bod^^ Its mem- 

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

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

 that time almost every one who studied any other branch of science 

 cultivated geology also. 



The American Association prepared the way for the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences, which was established by 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 Academy of vSciences, Senator Sum- 

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

 National Institution in 1806.- 



^Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1851, 

 pp. 6, 48. 



-The idea of an Academy of Sciences with unlocalized niembenship 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, doubtless intended 

 to include everything of this kind. Joel Barlow and Tliomas Jefferson at the begin- 



