MEMOIRS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 797 



I proposed a provision that all the proceeds of the be- 

 quest be placed in the possession of the Treasurer of the 

 United States, with a direction that separate accounts of it 

 should be kept from those of all the other accounts at the 

 Treasury. This had been done in the act of 1836, which 

 the committee considered as no longer obligator3% since the 

 investment of the fund, almost entirely, in stocks of the 

 United States. The provision itself in the act of 1836 was 

 questioned, until I produced it; and the provision was now, 

 at my motion, re-inserted in the present bill. The com- 

 mittee adjourned to next Friday. 



January 80, 1846. 



At ten o'clock this morning I attended a meeting of the 

 select committee on the Smithsonian bequest. Present, six 

 members — Owen, Adams, Jenkins, Sims, Davis, Wilmot; 

 absent. Marsh, of Vermont, who afterwards told me that it 

 was because he liad forgotten the time of the meeting. 

 Some progress — very little — was made in the discussion of 

 Mr. Owen's bill. In the sixth section provision is made for 

 a superintendent to take charge of the ground, buildings, 

 and property belonging to the Institution, and also for the 

 appointment of a professor of agriculture, horticulture, and 

 rural economy, and for a distribution among the people of 

 the Union of fruits, plants, seeds, and vegetables, to be col- 

 lected b}^ this superintendent with the professor; and gar- 

 deners, practical agriculturists, and laborers, to be hired 

 from time to time by him as may be necessary. 



I moved to strike out this section, which I consider as a 

 cumbersome, expensive, and useless burden upon the Insti- 

 tution, It was connected also with a further project, de- 

 clared in the seventh section, for the appointment of a nor- 

 mal brancii of the Institution, with an indefinite number of 

 professors of common school and other scientific instruc- 

 tion — all which I propose to expunge from the bill. The 

 discussion was desultory, and, before taking the question 

 upon it, some amendments of detail to the sixth section 

 were proposed, and debated until the meeting of the House, 

 when the committeee adjourned to next Friday. 



February 13, 1846. 



I attended the meeting of the select committee upon the 

 Smithsonian bequest; all the members present — Owen, 

 Adams, Jenkins, Sims, Davis, Marsh, Wilmot. Mr. Owen's 

 bill was further discussed. The question was taken upon 

 my motion to strike out the provision for the appointment 



