JOURNAL OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 479 



The Secretary has received a verbal communication from the President of Colum- 

 bian College, and the Dean of the National Medical College, requesting that regular 

 courses of lectures be given, at stated periods, at the Institution, and that the pupils 

 of their respective schools he allowed to attend. Though the plan of the Institution 

 does not, strictly speaking, embrace educational operations, yet it may indirectly 

 afford important aid in advancing the cause of education. 



The Secretary left the city during the warmest weather of the season ; but, in his 

 absence, he was engaged in duties pertaining to the operations of the Institution. He 

 first attended the meeting of the American Association, at Cambridge, as the repre- 

 sentative of the Institution. He next visited Toronto, Canada West, to examine the 

 system of meteorological observations, carried on at the observatory of that place, 

 and to inform himself practically of the manipulations of the self-registering photo- 

 graphic magnetic apparatus. He afterwards spent two weeks in the city of New 

 York, with Professor Guyot, in arranging the meteorological system of the State of 

 New York. 



Dr. Foreman, during the absence of the Secretary, besides attending to the mete- 

 orological correspondence, was engaged in arranging in volumes, and indexing the 

 letters of the Institution. These already amount to several thousands, exclusive of 

 the correspondence relative to the library, which is in the possession of Professor 

 Jewett, who will arrange them in accordance with the same plan. 



[The journal of the Executive Committee subsequent to this 

 meeting was destroyed in the fire at the Smithsonian Institution.] 



