EULOGY ON PROFESSOR ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE. 367 



man was so well qualified as himself to secure the results which the 

 nation and its commercial interests demanded. His education and 

 training at West Point, his skill in original investigations, his thorough 

 familiarity with the principles of applied science, his knowledge of the 

 world, and his gentlemanly deportment, were all in a greater or less de- 

 gree essential elements in the successful prosecution of the survey. It 

 would appear as if the training and acquisition of every period of his 

 life, and the development of every trait of his character, had been 

 especially ordained to fit him in every respect to overcome the difficul- 

 ties of this position. Besides the qualifications we have enumerated, 

 he possessed rare executive ability, which enabled him to govern and 

 guide the diverse elements of the vast undertaking with consummate 

 tact and skill. Quick to perceive and acknowledge merit in others, 

 he rapidly gathered around him a corps of men eminently well quali- 

 fied for the execution of the tasks to which he severally assigned them. 

 The Coast Survey had been recommended to Congress by President 

 Jefferson as early as 1807, but it was not until ten years afterward that 

 the work was actually commenced, under the superintendence of Pro- 

 fessor Hassler, an eminent Swiss engineer, whose plans had been pre- 

 viously sanctioned by the American Philosophical Society. Though the 

 fundamental features of the survey had been established on the most 

 approved scientific principles yet so frequent were the changes in the 

 policy of the Government, and so limited were the appropriations, that, 

 even up to the time of Professor Bache's appointment, in 1843, little more 

 thau a beginning had been made. The survey, so far as accomplished, 

 extended only from New York Harbor to Point Judith, on the east coast, 

 and southward to Cape Henlopen. The new Superintendent saw the 

 necessity of greatly enlarging the plan, so as to embrace a much broader 

 field of simultaneous labor than it had previously included. He divided 

 the whole coast line into sections, and organized, under separate parties, 

 the essential operations of the survey simultaneously in each. He com- 

 menced the exploration of the Gulf Stream, and at the same time pro- 

 jected a series of observations on the tides, on the magnetism of the earth, 

 and the direction of the winds at different seasons of the year. He 

 also instituted a succession of researches in regard to the bottom of the 

 ocean within soundings, and the forms of animal life which are found 

 there, thus offering new and unexpected indications to the navigator. 

 He pressed into service, for the determination of the longitude, the elec- 

 tric telegraph; for the ready reproduction of charts, photography; and 

 for multiplying copper-plate engravings, the new art of electrotyping. 

 In planning and directing the execution of these varied improvements, 

 which exacted so much comprehensiveness in design and minuteness in 

 detail, Professor Bache was entirely successful. He was equally for- 

 tunate, principally through the moral influence of his character, in 

 impressing upon the Government, and especially upon Congress, a more 

 just estimate of what such a survey required for its maintenance and 



