190 BOARD OF REGENTS. 



Washington, D. C, March 27, 1862. 

 Sir : In compliance with your suggestion, I beg to set before you a few facts re- 

 specting Liberia College, in the republic of Liberia, West Africa. 



1. The college is the offspring of the benevolence of citizens of Massachusetts who, 

 in 1850, organized themselves into an association for educational purposes in Liberia, 

 with the title of " Trustees of Donation for Education in Liberia," and an act of in- 

 corporation was obtained the same year from the Legislature of Massachusetts. 



2. Their sympathy and exertions have been so generously seconded that the trustees 

 have been enabled to erect a capacious and substantial building on the heights of 

 Monserrada, in the city of Monrovia, the capital of the republic. The college build- 

 ing is three stories in height, with piazzas surrounding it ; with dormitories capable 

 of accommodating between thirty and forty students, apartments for two professors 

 and their families, lecture and dining rooms, chapel, &c. This building, the material 

 of which is brick, cost nigh $30,000, and is now finished. The college building has 

 been presented, as a gift, to the republic of Liberia, for a national institution, and is 

 to be governed by a body of Liberian trustees, nominated by the President of the 

 republic, and elected by the senate. 



3. Besides the above expenditure, that is for the building, the " Trustees of Dona- 

 tions," &c, have, under their own control, at interest, an endowment of about 

 $30,000, and a sum of about $40,000 has been left in legacies, for the purposes of Li- 

 berian education, and is under the control of other colonization societies, which will, 

 without doubt, be ultimately appropriated to the ends of the Liberia College. A fur- 

 ther sum of $50,000 is promised for the Liberia College by the several members of an 

 eminent family in New York, in lieu of a like sum left by their father on his decease, 

 for the college, but which was lost by a legal decision. 



4. Liberal donations of minerals and large gifts of books have been made to the 

 college, both by distinguished individuals in this country and by Harvard and Yale 

 Colleges. 



A faculty has already been elected ; two of its professors inaugurated ; and the col- 

 lege has already, this year, commenced operations. 



The undersigned, authorized by the American trustees for the purpose, respectfully 

 requests the addition of the publications of the Smithsonian Institution to the collec- 

 tions already made for the Liberia College. 

 I am, sir, your obedient servant, 



ALEX. CEUMMELL. 

 Prof. Henry. 



Recommendation of Shea's Indian Linguistics, Referred to in the Secretary' s Report. 



We recommend Mr. Shea's series of grammars and dictionaries of the Indian lan- 

 guages to the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, and think that a subscription 

 which will insure the continuance of the series will be eminently within the scope of 

 the foundation, by preserving a number of rapidly perishing monuments of human 

 knowledge, and securing to posterity, in the languages of the native tribes, the surest 

 clue to their origin and affinities. 



E. B. O' Callaghan. George Livermore. 



Jno. V. L. Pruyn. George H. Moore. 



S. B. Woolworth. George W. Kiggs, Jr. 



Jared Sparks. Peter Force. 



George Gibbs. 



Mr. Shea's Account of his Library of American Linguistics. 



With the increasing interest felt in the science of ethnology, much attention has of 

 late been given to the study of the languages of the aboriginal tribes of America, 

 and it must be confessed that more philosophical research, talent, and investigation 

 have been bestowed upon them in Germany than in our own country. Yet the sci- 

 ence is still in its infancy. Belying on crude or hastily taken vocabularies, which 

 often confound different languages, many have set on foot theories, and entered into 

 criticisms, which fall to the ground on the examination of a carefully prepared gram- 

 mar or dictionary of the language. Fortunately, of very many American languages 

 such works exist, often the labor of early missionaries, whom a long residence with a 

 tribe, a knowledge of their habits, manners, and usages, enabled to write with accu- 

 racy and judgment. 



Very few of these works were printed. Most have remained in manuscript, and 



