JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS 

 OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



Washington, D. C, January 20, 1875. 



In accordance with a resolution of the Board of Regents, fixing the 

 third Wednesday of January as the time for the commencement of the 

 annual session, a meeting of the Board of Regents was held on Wednes- 

 day, 20th of January, 1875, at 7 o'clock p. m., at the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution. 



Present, the Chancellor, Chief- Justice Waite ; Hon. Henry Wilson, 

 Vice-President of the United States ; Senators H. Hamlin and A. A. 

 Sargeut; Representee Hon. E. R. Hoar; Hon. Peter Parker, Prof. 

 Asa Gray, L. L. D., Prof. H. Coppee, L. L. D., Hon. George Bancroft, 

 and Professor Henry, the Secretary. 



The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved. 



Excuses for non-attendance were received from Prof. Dana, Doctor 

 Maclean, Hon. Mr. Stevenson, and Hon. Mr. Cox. 



The Secretary presented the following letter from General Sherman,, 

 which was read : 



Headquarters Army of the United States, 



Saint Louis, Mo., November 12, 1874. 



My Dear Professor : Having removed my headquarters and resi- 

 dence from Washington to Saint Louis, it is proper that I should resign 

 the post I have held for a few years as a Regent of your most honored 

 Institution. I beg, therefore, that you will construe this letter as a 

 tender of my resignation to the Board of Regents, or to such official as 

 can accept the same. 



In thus severing my official connection with the Smithsonian, I beg 

 leave to express to you and your associates my sense of the noble task in 

 which you are engaged, and of my earnest prayer that the Institution 

 under your management will continue to fulfil its magnificent design. 



A knowledge of science, that is of the laws of nature, is so intimately 

 connected with the advance of higher civilization, that Mr. Smithson 

 displayed unusual wisdom in so endowing his institution that it should 

 give its principal labor to the increase of knowledge, to accumulating 

 and securing new knowledge to be added to the old, which should be 

 a special province of the universities of the whole earth. I therefore 

 coincide with you perfectly in your special construction of the will, and 

 hope that the Regents will continue to construe it literally, as a legacy 

 sacred in its nature and beneficial in the highest degree. 



I beg you will assure your associates that among the many causes of 



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