

EARLY YEARS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 503 



held in Philadelphia, and on September 20, 1848, the original or- 

 ganization was changed to the " American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science." 



William B. Rogers presided at the dissolution of the Associ- 

 ation of Geologists and Naturalists, and yielded the chair to 

 William C. Redfield, the first President of the American Associ- 

 ation for the Advancement of Science. 



Prof. Redfield was a resident of New York city and a pioneer 

 in the study of meteorology. He published a theory of storms 

 which became well known and was strenuously controverted by 

 Espy, so that the storm controversy was a conspicuous feature of 

 scientific annals. Prof. Redfield's influence had much to do with 

 the establishment of the Weather Bureau of the Uni-ted States. 



The association began with a membership of four hundred and 

 sixty-one, which increased to a thousand and four in 1854 at the 

 Washington meeting under the presidency of James D. Dana. 

 This was high- water mark for the first thirty years of its exist- 

 ence. In 1850 and 1851 two meetings were held in each year, but 

 none in 1852. Thereafter an- 

 nual meetings were held till 

 1860. The presidents during 

 this period, besides those al- 

 ready mentioned, were Jo- 

 seph Henry, Alexander D. 

 Bache, Louis Agassiz, Ben- 

 jamin Peirce, John Torrey, 

 James Hall, Stephen Alex- 

 ander, and Isaac Lea. 



Of this illustrious roll, 

 James Hall alone survives. 

 He presided at the second 

 Albany meeting in 1856, when 

 the old Dudley Observatory 

 was dedicated, the largest, 

 most important,and most rep- 

 resentative scientific meeting 

 ever held in America before 

 the war. The glowing elo- 

 quence of Edward Everett in 

 his dedicatory oration, deliv- 

 ered in a tent erected for the 

 occasion in the historic park 

 of the Albany Academy, still 

 who was then a pupil in that 



I)k. Martin II. Boye, surviving founder of the 

 Association of American Geologists and of the 

 A. A. A. S. 



haunts the memory of the writer, 

 academy. Meetings of the associa- 

 tion during the ante-bellum period were held as far east as Cam- 

 bridge and as far west as Cincinnati, while Montreal and Charles- 



