ADDRESS OF PROF. A. GRAY. 69 



which the accounts of all the original researches in science, the 

 educational progress, and the general advance of civilization in the 

 New World are exchanged for similar works of the Old World." 



The plan which our late Secretary originated has commended 

 itself to the judgment of successive Boards of Regents, and, we 

 may be permitted to add, is now approved wherever it is known 

 and understood. 



Professor HENRY took his full share of the various honorable 

 duties to which such men are called. He was in turn President 

 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 

 the year 1849; of the Society for the Advancement of Education, 

 in 1855; a Trustee of Princeton College, and of Columbian Uni- 

 versity, also of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in which the Smith- 

 sonian Institution deposits its art collections ; Visitor of the Gov- 

 ernment Hospital for the Insane; President of the Philosophical 

 Society of Washington; President of the National Academy of 

 Sciences at Washington. For many years a member of the Light- 

 House Board, to which he gave gratuitous and invaluable services 

 as Chairman of its committee on experiments, he added for the 

 last seven years the chairmanship of the board itself, in his adminis- 

 tration no sinecure. Advice and investigation were sought from 

 him, from time to time, by every department of Government. All 

 were sure that his advice was never biased by personal interest ; 

 and his sound judgment, supported by spotless character, was 

 greatly deferred to. 



We have said that in coming to Washington a career of investi- 

 gation was exchanged for a life of administration. It should rather 

 be said that his investigations thereafter took a directly practical 

 turn, as his mind was brought to bear upon difficult questions of 

 immediate importance which were referred to him by Government 

 or came in the course of official duty. In the light-house service 

 alone his timely experiments upon lard-oil lighting, and the firmness 



