CENTENXIAL CELEBRATIOX OF THE ACADEMY. 29 



" As the arts and sciences are the foundation and support of agricidture, manufactures, and commerce • 

 as they are necessary to the wealth, peace, independence, and happiness of a people ; essentially jyromote 

 the honor and dignify of the government v:hich patronizes tlum ; and as they are most effectually culti- 

 vated and diffused through a State by the forming and incorporating of men of genius and learning 

 into public Societies : " 



For these beneficial purposes the Academy was formed. 



The list of incorporated members, recited in alphabetical order, includes the honored names of 

 Adams (.Samuel and John), Bowdoin, Chauncv, Gushing, Dalton, Daua, Gardner, Hancock, Holyoke, 

 Jackson, Lincoln, Lowell, Oliver, Paine, Phillips, Pickering, Sewall, Sullivan, Wan-en, Wisglesworth, 

 "Willard and Winthrop. Governor Bowdoin was the fii-st President, and his successors were : John 

 Adams, Edward Augustus Holyoke, John Quincy Adams, Nathaniel Bowditch, James Jackson, John 

 Pickering, Jacob Bigelow, Asa Gray, and Charles Francis Adams. 



The Academy had an honorable origin, and has sustained, and still holds, an honored position 

 among the learned Societies of the world. It is favorably known among its peers, if less known in 

 the city and community in which its quiet operations have been carried on. It has promoted 

 investigation ; it has published at its own expense, out of scanty means, nearly thirty volumes of 

 Memoirs and Proceedings ; and most of its publications are original contributions to Science in the 

 hroadest sense, and to the liberal and useful Arts. Increasing its activity with the increase of 

 scientific men and earnest students in this vicinity, its published results have become more and 

 more numerous as well as more valuable ; and for several years past it has brought out a yearly 

 volume of researches which it is thought would be creditable to any of the Pioyal Societies and 

 Imperial Academies of Europe. The influence of the Academy upon the progress of science would 

 have more prominently appeared if its pecuniary means were at aU proportioned to the scientific 

 activity it has incited. For lack of means, many important researches here originated are published 

 elsewhere, or remain unpublished, or are shorn of needful illustration. 



The Academy is also the administrator of a responsible trust, founded by Count Eumford, for 

 the advancement of the knowledge of light and heat and of their practical applications. Moreover, 

 the Academy has slowly accumulated a library of special richness in the departments of physics, 

 chemistry, technology and mathematics, and in the transactions of the learned societies with which 

 it corresponds ; and it has no place of its own in which to preserve and use it. 



L^pon attaining what may be called its majority, the Academy will make an effort to obtain a 

 modest independent establishment. It has formed its character ; it has earned a good name. It 

 wants a local habitation, a house of its own, where its meetings can be held and its archives and 

 library preserved and conveniently used. Even more, it wants a fund for the publication of its 

 Jlemoirs and Proceedings. The Academy is -supported mainly by assessments upon its Eesident 

 Fellows, whicii sometimes press heavily upon those to whom the institution is most helpful and 

 whose labors may be expected to add most to its renown. To the publication of the results of the 

 self-denying labors of the men whose minds it stimulates, and whose success it crowns and secures 

 by bringing them before the scientific world, the Academy is indebted for its reputation ; and it is 

 only by such publication that its character can be maintained and extended. 



