10 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



be limited in number and more select than the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, and should have its meetings less encumbered with 

 unsatisfactory communications. He was decidedly in favor of the enterprise, 

 thinking that the exclusive character, and what might possibly be considered the 

 aristocratic appearance or desires of such an organization, would not be distasteful 

 to Americans, nor really inconsistent with their democratic principles. The 

 Academy was incorporated by the United States Congress in 1863, and he was 

 one of the original members, and continued to be a member throughout his life." " 



The foregoing assertion of Lesley's early interest in the forma- 

 tion of an academy bears the impress of accuracy, but is some- 

 what at variance with a published letter of Mrs. Lesley, dated 

 March 8, 1863, as follows: 



" Yesterday came an official letter from the Honorable Henry Wilson, naming 

 him [Lesley] as one of the corporators of the new National Academy of 

 Sciences, and asking his attendance at the first meeting in New York. This was 

 a very great surprise to Peter [Lesley], a thing entirely unsought and unsolicited, 

 and gives him pleasure." 15 



It is quite in harmony with Lesley's unselfish and unassuming 

 character that his interest in the Academy should be entirely 

 impersonal. 



There are some indications besides that contained in Lyman's 

 address, just quoted, that the question of forming an academy 

 was more or less widely discussed in 1862. In a biographical 

 sketch of Professor Benjamin A. Gould, written by A. McF. 

 Davis and published in 1897, the following remark is made: 



" In 1862, he was appointed to reduce and compute the astronomical observa- 

 tions made at the Washington Observatory, and he was active both that year and 

 the next in promoting the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences, of 

 which he was an original member." 16 



Doctor George W. Hill, in a letter addressed to Doctor Arnold 

 Hague, remarks of Admiral Davis and Professor Peirce : 



"Ames, Mary Lesley. Life and letters of Peter and Susan Lesley, vol. 2, 1909, p. 469. 

 (Appendix D. Biographical sketch of J. Peter Lesley, by Benjamin Smith Lyman, Phila- 

 delphia, Pa. (New York Meeting, American Institute of Mining Engineers, October, 

 1903.).) (Published originally in Trans. Amer. Inst. Mining Engineers.) 



15 Op. cit., vol. i, p. 419. 



"Davis, A. McF. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. Proc. Amer. Antiq. Soc., April, 1897, p. 7. 

 (Also separate.) 



