436 MEMORIAL, OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



gave his views of the relations between meteorology and agricul- 

 ture. In this and other ways, the Smithsonian Institution has been 

 a hot-bed for starting and nursing new projects in their days of 

 infancy and weakness. After they have outgrown its accommo- 

 dations and proved their usefulness, they have been adopted by the 

 general Government and transplanted to a richer soil. 



For many years Professor Henry has been a conspicuous figure, 

 not merely in scientific circles, but in the full view of the public : 

 his name and his co-operation have been in constant demand. He 

 naturally gravitated to places of honor which were often places of 

 additional labor. Men of leisure have no time to give to occasional 

 calls upon their public spirit. The hard-workers must also do all 

 the extra work. Professor Henry was no exception to this rule. 

 To the day of his death, he filled positions of trust and responsi- 

 bility, with duties sufficient to crush an effeminate man. But they 

 seemed to rest lightly upon shoulders which sustained, beside, the 

 weight of a great institution. His mind was ever in a state of 

 prolonged tension ; but it kept its balance under these distractions, 

 as do the rings of Saturn amid the multitudinous disturbances of 

 its satellites. Often he waited for the leisure which never came to 

 him, when he might write out for publication scientific communi- 

 cations which he had made from a brief. He was President of the 

 American Association at its second meeting, in Cambridge, in 1849. 

 He gave the usual address of the retiring President at the fourth 

 meeting, in New Haven, but it was not printed. He was Vice- 

 President of the National Acaderny of Sciences in I860, succeeded 

 Dr. Bache as President in 1868, and died in office. 



The most responsible and the most onerous of the gratuitous ser- 

 vices which he gave to science and the country were rendered in his 

 capacity of member of the Light-House Board, of which he was 

 for seven years the chairman. The substitution of lenses for mir- 

 rors began the revolution in light-houses ; but lens or mirror, with- 

 out the light, is no better than a steam-engine without steam. To 

 conquer prejudice by experiment, and save millions to the country 

 by exchanging sperm oil for lard oil, is not so brilliant a service as 

 the discovery of a new law of nature. But, more than any dis- 

 covery, it makes science respected in high places, and enlists the 



