ON MR. DU PONCEAU S HISTORY. G7 



for some time. The internal evidence of the minute 

 book does not go farther back than the 18th of 

 December 1757, from which date room-rent and 

 &quot;necessaries&quot; appear to have been paid for; and it 

 was not until the letter of Charles Thomson came to 

 light, that our Society has been enabled to fix 1750 as 

 the year in which the Society- Junto was established. 

 It is, indeed, true that Mr. Du Ponceau controverts 

 this position in the supplementary comments which 

 he furnished to the Committee since he had the 

 opportunity of examining Mr. Fisher s communica 

 tion. Our venerable President conceives that the 

 Society of 1750 is really the same as the Franklin- 

 Junto, though it may have had its interruptions, 

 breaking its continuity. He furthermore, conceives 

 that great weight must be given to the assertion of 

 the Rev. Dr. William Smith, in his Eulogium on 

 Franklin in 1792, that the Franklin- Junto &quot;became 

 at last the foundation of the American Philosophical 

 Society.&quot; If it became the foundation of our So 

 ciety, it could only have become such through the 

 Society-Junto, which is thus proved, admitting Dr. 

 Smith s accuracy, to be identical with it. But 

 Thomson s testimony is directly contradictory, that 

 the Society-Junto began in 1750. Now Mr. Du 

 Ponceau remarks, both Smith and Thomson were 

 men of veracity and endeavors to reconcile their 

 statements by supposing that Thomson did not 

 know that the Society, to which he referred in his 



