258 



NA rURE 



[January i6. 1896 



business, and through them from the people of the United States ; 

 since the comparatively small income of the Institution has been 

 made a nucleus for very considerable annual appropriations 

 granted by the United States Congress, for the support of the 

 manifold interests the administration of which have been 

 entrusted to it. It is to such support that it will owe its efficiency 

 in the future, and it seems right that every opportunity should 

 be taken to explain its operations to the public. No intelligent 

 American can fail to appreciate the benefits which the highest 

 interests of the American people receive through the proper 

 administration of the Smithsonian bequest. 



The Origin of the Institution. 



The story of the foundation of the Smithsonian Institution 

 sounds more like romance than fact. It seems like the fulfilment 

 of some prophecy, and all the more so because of the promise of 

 the future. 



The father of the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, in 

 early life known as Sir Hugh Smithson, was one of the most 

 distinguished members of the English peerage. Upon the plate 

 of his coffin in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried " in 

 great pomp" in 1786, he was described as "the most high, 

 puissant and most noble prince Hugh Percy, Duke and Earl of 

 Northumberland, Earl Percy, Baron Warkworth and Lovaine, 



Fig. I. — The Smithsonian Building. 



Lord Lieutenant and Gustos Rotulorum of the Counties of Mid- 

 dlesex and Northumberland and of all America, one of the 

 Lords of his Majesty's most Honourable and Privy Council, and 

 Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, &c., &c., &c." 



While his aged father was supporting this overwhelming 

 burden of honours and dignities, and while his half-brother. Earl 

 Percy, was serving as a Lieutenant-General in the war against 

 the rebellious British colonies in North America, ^ James Smith- 

 son, a youth of modest fortune, was acquiring the rudiments of 

 a scientific education in English schools and colleges. He 

 received the degree of Master of Arts from Pembroke College, 

 Oxford, in 1786, the year of his father's death. He was then 

 known as James Lewis Macie, for he did not assume the name 

 of Smithson until several years later, after he had attained to 

 .some reputation as a man of science. His mother was not the 

 Duchess of Northumberland, but her cousin, Elizabeth Keate 

 Macie, of Weston, near Bath (widow of James Macie), great- 

 granddaughter of Sir George Hungerford of Studley, and 

 his wife, Lady Frances Seymour, sister of the sixth Duke of 



1 Lord Algernon Percy, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, commanded 

 the reinforcements at the battle of Lexington in 1775, and led the column 

 which reduced Fort Washington, near New York, in 1776. 



NO. 1368, VOL. 53] 



Somerset and aunt of Algernon Seymour, Lord Percy, whose 

 daughter Sir Hugh Smithson married, and was thus enabled to 

 assume the name of Percy and the title of Duke of Northumber- 

 land.^ 



The Smithsons were an old Yorkshire family ; Sir Hugh, the 

 great-grandfather of James Smithson, having been created 

 baronet by Charles II. in 1660. 



James Smithson was undoubtedly proud of his illustrious 

 ancestry, for in his will he described himself as " son of Hugh, 

 first Duke of Northumberland and Elizabeth, heiress of the 

 Hungerfords of Studley, and niece of Charles, the Proud Duke 

 of Somerset." 



He was, however, a man of broad, philosophic mind, and his 

 training in the best scientific methods of his day, and association 

 with leading investigators in Germany and France, and with his 

 brother Fellows of the Royal Society of London, had developed 

 in his mind a generous appreciation of the value of scholarship 

 and scientific culture, and of the still greater importance which 

 these were to have in coming years. 



"The best blood of England flows in my veins," he once 

 wrote ; " on my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my 

 mother's I am related to kings, ^ but this avails me not. J\ly 

 name shall live in the memory of man ivhen the titles of the 

 Nor thtimber lands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten. 



These words seem little less than 

 prophetic. The founder of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution has already earned 

 perpetual fame. 



The names of the successive Dukes 

 of Northumberland, his kinsmen, have, 

 as a rule, been little known outside 

 Great Britain, though several of them 

 have been munificent patrons of science. 

 Smithson seems, early in life, to have 

 come fully into harmony with the scien- 

 tific spirit of his time. In 1784, while 

 still an undergraduate at Oxford, he 

 made a scientific exploration of the 

 coasts of Scotland in company with a 

 party of geologists. In 1787 he was 

 admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, 

 and during the remaining forty-two 

 years of his life, in Berlin, Paris, Rome, 

 Florence, and Geneva, he was an 

 associate of the leading men of science, 

 and devoted himself to research. He 

 made an extensive collection of minerals, 

 which was destroyed by the burning of 

 a portion of the Smith.sonian building in 

 1865, and he always carried with him 

 in his travels a portable laboratory for 

 chemical research. 



His contributions to science are in- 

 cluded in twenty-seven memoirs, chiefly 

 upon topics in mineralogy and organic 

 chemistry, though some of them relate 

 to applied science and the industrial, 

 arts. His work, though not of an 

 epoch-making character, was remarkable for its minute accu- 

 racy. 



Smithson was a greater man than is indicated by his published 

 writings alone. Berzelius declared that he was one of the most 

 accomplished mineralogists in all Europe. 



He was a man of generous culture who understood thoroughly 

 the needs of the world in the direction of scientific endowment, 



y Smithson was born in France in 1765. The date 1754 usually given fo'' 

 his birth and engraved upon his tomb is wrong, as is shown by his Oxford 

 matriculation records. The source of his fortune is not certainly known. 

 At Oxford, where he was entered as a Gentleman Commoner, he was 

 understood to have succeeded to the estate of his mother's husband, Macie, 

 and in 7704 he received a bequest of £->poo from his half-sister, Dorothy 

 Percy. The major portion of his estate, however, came to him by the 

 bequest of his half-brother, Colonel Henry Louis Dickinson, of the 84th 

 Regiment of Foot, who died in Paris in 1820. The statement of Smithson 

 that his mother was " heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley," probably 

 indicates the source of a considerable portion of the we.ilth of which that 

 document made disposition. 



■- Smithson was of royal descent, through his maternal ancestor, the ill- 

 fated Lady Catharine Grey, great-granddaughter of King Henry VIL, 

 grandniece of Henry VIIL, and cousin of Elizabeth. His ancestor in the 

 ninth generation, Edward Seymour, the first Duke of Somerset and Protector 

 of England, was the brother of Queen Jane Seymour and the uncle of King 

 Edward VL 



