The Board of Regents 75 



rectitude of his moral intuitions as for the clear perceptions 

 of his calm and judicious intellect." 



At a meeting on January 18, 1889, on the occasion of the 

 death of Professor Asa Gray, after fifteen years of service, a 

 committee of Regents reported as follows : 



" Upon the Smithsonian Institution his loss falls with par- 

 ticular weight, since his active interest in its welfare is almost 

 continuous with its existence, for he was one of the Com- 

 mittee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 

 report of which upon the ' plan proposed for the organization 

 of the Smithsonian Institution,' rendered in 1847, has exer- 

 cised so active an influence upon the subsequent history of 

 this Establishment. 



"Appointed a Regent in January, 1874, to succeed Pro- 

 fessor Louis Agassiz, his efficient and active interest in the 

 welfare of this Institution has been one of its most valuable 

 possessions, and it is with deeper feeling than formal reso- 

 lutions of regret usually convey that we now endeavor to 

 express some part of our sense of irreparable loss." 



On the death of the Honorable Samuel S. Cox, in 1890, 

 after a period of service as Regent which, though occasion- 

 ally interrupted, continued in the neighborhood of thirty 

 years, at a meeting of the Board on January 8, 1890, a com- 

 mittee reported that 



" While he was not a regular attendant at all the meetings 

 of the Board, he was ever ready to advance the interests of the 

 Institution and of science, either as a Regent or as a member 

 of Congress ; and although such men as Hamlin, Fessen- 

 den, Colfax, Chase, Garfield, Sherman, Gray, and Waite, in 

 a list comprising Presidents, Vice- Presidents, Chief Justices, 

 and Senators of the United States, were his associates, there 

 were none whose service was longer or more gratefully to be 

 remembered, nor perhaps any to whom the Institution owes 

 more than to Mr. Cox." 



