262 Life of Count Rumford. 



interest so as to present in itself a matter of embarrass- 

 ment. A committee of the Academy chosen, for the 

 purpose, consisting of the eminent Dr. Nathaniel Bow- 

 ditch, President Josiah Quincy of Harvard College, 

 and the Hon. Francis C. Gray, made a Report at 

 the end of December, 1829, which resulted in legisla- 

 tive and judicial measures for relieving this embarass- 

 ment. 



The Academy had given its pledge, while Count 

 Rumford still lived, that it would " sacredly comply 

 with the conditions of the donation." These condi- 

 tions were mainly two, one of them, however, being 

 limited by the other. The Academy was to have in 

 view the award of its medal once in two years, but it 

 was to be given only to the author of the most im- 

 portant discovery or useful improvement made in the 

 two preceding years on heat or on light, on the Amer- 

 ican Continent or any of its Islands. To refuse to 

 award the medal to one who had a right to it, or to 

 bestow it on a claimant who had no sufficient merit, or 

 upon a favored experimenter, for the sake of not allow- 

 ing the biennial award to fail, would have equally 

 thwarted the intent of the donor. A discovery or an 

 improvement of a sort to satisfy the terms which Count 

 Rumford could define only relatively, because not admit- 

 ting of an arbitrary or of an absolute measurement, was 

 the requisite fact to engage the attention of the Acad- 

 emy. As such discovery or improvement was to have 

 been made a matter of public notoriety by printing "or 

 otherwise," and as the Academy had taken measures for 

 giving the widest circulation to the terms of the trust 

 which they held, it was not likely that ignorance on the 

 side of either party concerned would deprive any one who 



