TWENTY-NINTH CONGRESS, 1845-47. 371 



No Latin or Greek; no mere literature; no medicine or 

 law. The above recommendations in regard to botany and 

 agriculture, and also those excluding the learned languages 

 and professions, have been adopted in the present Smithso- 

 nian bill. 



Mr. Richard Rush proposed a building, with grounds 

 attached, sufficient to reproduce seeds and plants for distri- 

 bution; a press to print lectures, &c.; courses of lectures on 

 the leading branches of physical and moral science, and on 

 government and public law ; the salaries to be ample enough 

 to command the best men, and admit of the exclusive devotion 

 of their time to the studies and investigations of their posts ; 

 the lectures, when delivered, to be the property of the In- 

 stitution for publication. Most of these recommendations 

 are adopted in the bill before yon. Mr. Rush also made the 

 excellent suggestion, that consuls and other United States 

 officers might greatly aid the Institution by collecting and 

 sending home useful information and valuable specimens 

 from abroad. 



The venerable gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] 

 who has labored in this good cause with more zeal and per- 

 severance than any other man, expressed, in his reply, the 

 opinion, that no part of the fund should be devoted " to the 

 endowment of any school, college, university, or ecclesias- 

 tical establishment :" and he proposed to employ seven 

 years' income of the fund in the establishment of an obser- 

 vatory, with instruments and a small library. This pro- 

 posal was afterwards, at no less than four different sessions, 

 incorporated in a bill ; but failed on these occasions, among 

 the unfinished business. I believe I am authorized in say- 

 ing for the gentleman from Massachusetts, that inasmuch 

 as these, his intentions, have been since otherwise carried 

 out, and as we have already, in this District, a Government 

 observatory, at least equal in everything but the experience 

 of its observers to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, he 

 has ceased to press that proposal. 



Though the plan actually proposed by the gentleman from 

 Massachusetts was restricted, for some years, to an observa- 

 tory, he yet recognized, as in accordance with the language 

 of the bequest, " the improvement of all the arts and 

 sciences." In a report made in 1840, he adds : 



" A botanical garden, a cabinet of natural history, a museum of miner- 

 alogy, conchology, or geology, a general accumulating library, are un- 

 doubtedly included within the comprehensive grasp of Mr. Smithson's 

 design." — H. R. Report No. 271, 26th Cong. Isi. Session, p. 18. 



These various objects are all embraced in the bill which 



