9 



ally the authorities of each, in friendly conference, 

 tried to bring them together, and after some diplomacy, 

 and some difficulties about the status that the mem- 

 bers of each should occupy in a new organization, the 

 union was happily effected, in the month of Decem- 

 ber, 1768, and on the 2d of January, 1769, Benjamin 

 Franklin, the honored scientist, the great statesman, 

 the man of affairs, was elected President of the 

 Society, and the subordinate officers were about 

 equally divided among the members of the two insti- 

 tutions. 



The new society took the title of " The American 

 Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia for Pro- 

 moting Useful Knowledge," and such has been its 

 honored and honorable designation from that time to 

 the present hour. 



I have thus briefly sketched the history of the build- 

 ing in which we are now assembled, and, as briefly, the 

 history of the Society itself, and perhaps I ought to 

 terminate my address at this point, but I cannot for- 

 bear to call the attention of my brother members to 

 the illustrious list of members elected from 1769 up to 

 the present day, the labors of the Society in promoting 

 useful knowledge, the correspondence that it has held 

 with foreign bodies of the same sort, the accumulation 

 of the treasures which surround us here to-day, and all 

 that seems to clothe such an association with a most 

 honorable record and with the means for continued 

 usefulness. 



I may say, in passing, that I have known this hall for 

 seventy-five years; that I recollect it when it was in 

 part occupied by Charles Wilson Peale, the founder of 

 the Philadelphia Museum, in which, while it con- 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVII. 131. B. PRINTED JAN. 24,. 1890. 



