530 Additional Notes, 



This, in justice, however, is to be ascribed to the zeal and 

 activity of a very few of its members. 



" The society has no other funds than those which arise 

 from the anmial contribution of two dollars from each of its 

 resident members, and the occasional donations of liberal in- 

 dividuals." 



Note (K),page 104. — The following extract of a letter from 

 a member of the academy, written in September 1801, will 

 give the reader a comprehensive view of the history of this 

 institution, and of its state at that time. 



" The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was incor- 

 porated I\Iay 3, 1780. The first meeting Avas on the 30th of 

 the same month. The late governor Bowdoin was elected 

 president; and was annually reelected until his death, which 

 happened Novembers, 1790. In May 1791, the hon. John 

 Adams, LL. D., was elected president, and has been annually 

 reelected since. In the year 1785 the academy published a 

 volume of its transactions in quarto. The preface to this 

 volume, the incorporating act, and statutes of the academy, 

 together with Mr. Bowdoin's inaugural address, which it con- 

 tains, will give full information of the nature and objects of 

 the society, and of its situation at that time. Though the vo- 

 lume is intrinsically valuable and well executed, and was 

 offered'for sale at the moderate price of sixteen shillings, j^et 

 it had a very limited sale, and the publication involved the 

 academy in a debt which occasioned no small embarrass- 

 ment. The first part of a second volume was, however, pub- 

 lished in 1793, and a sufficient number of papers has been 

 some time selected to complete the volume. It will soon be 

 published. 



" The present funds amount to about 7300 dollars, vested 

 in stocks of different descriptions. Five thousand dollars of 

 this sum arises from a donation made by count Rumford in 

 1796: the interest of which is, by the ter-ms of the donation, 

 to be ' applied and given, once every second year, as a pre- 



