8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANliOUS COLLECTIONS. 



to a great multitude of quiet workers, as well in other countries as 

 in our own, but it has been chiefly represented before the world 

 thus far by its three successive secretaries. 



First, by Joseph Henry, a physicist, who, in the simple love of 

 truth, utterly regardless of wealth, honors, or power, devoted him- 

 self to the discovery of principles which, since his time, have given 

 a bloom and fruitage of invention enriching his country and the 

 world. 



Next, by Spencer Fullerton iJaird, a naturalist, equally regardless 

 of riches or applause, who studied devotedly various forms and 

 phases of life on our planet, who also inspired and strengthened 

 thousands of lesser thinkers and workers, and who opened anew a 

 vast field for profitable human toil. 



And latest b\' him whom we today commemorate, Samuel Pier- 

 pont Langley, a physicist and astronomer, who wrought mainly in 

 fields far more remote from immediate human interests than those 

 cultivated by his predecessors, yet who proved himself in spirit, 

 thought, labor, and achievement fully worthy to be ranked with 

 them. 



I am asked to speak of him as a man; of his relations to his 

 fellow-men, and of his work as a whole. To others more compe- 

 tent will be left the duty of taking up special fields of his activity. 



Like Henry and Baird, Langley came from what in various other 

 lands is known as the middle class, neither burdened by wealth nor 

 crushed by povert}- — the class from which come so many leaders in 

 every field. 



He was descended from families which settled in Xew England 

 early in the seventeenth century, and among his ancestors appear 

 skilled artisans, mechanics, clergymen, and heads of schools ; among 

 the latter, a president of Harvard College, author of the first Amer- 

 ican work on astronomy. Among these forefathers of his were 

 abundantly represented robust force, mechanical skill, intellectual 

 vigor, and wide culture ; best of all, there was dominant among 

 them a staunch sense of duty, high moral ideals, and an all-consum- 

 ing pursuit of new truth— often by skillful methods and sometimes 

 upon original lines. They were of those who build or enrich states 

 by conscientious work and sane thought, and not of the proletary 

 immigrants who increase immediate wealth, but bring and spread 

 social disease. 



He was born on August 22, 1834, in Roxbury, Mass. ; was in due 

 time sent to various private schools, and later to the Boston Latin 

 and High Schools, where he was given what was then known as a 



