PRESIDENTIAL ADDEESS. 83 



In the seventh decade, which began with threatenings of civil 

 war, the growth of science was almost arrested. A meeting of 

 the American Association was to have been held in Nashville in 

 1861, but none was called. In 1866, at Buffalo, its sessions were 

 resumed with the old board of officers elected in 1860. One of 

 the vice-presidents, Gibbes, of South Carolina, had not been 

 heard from since the war began, and the Southern members 

 were all absent. Many of the Northern members wrote, explain- 

 ing that they could not attend this meeting because they 

 could not afford it, " such had been the increase of liv- 

 ing expenses, without a corresponding increase in the salaries 

 of men of science." Few scientists were engaged in the war, 

 though one, O. M. Mitchel, who left the directorship of the 

 Dudley observatory to accept the command of an Ohio brigade, 

 died in service in 1862, and another, Couthouy, sacrificed his 

 life in the navy. Others, like Ordway, left the ranks of science 

 never to resume their places as investigators. 



Scientific effort was paralyzed, and attention was directed to 

 other matters. In 1864, when the Smithsonian building was 

 burned, Lincoln, it is said, looking at the flames from the win- 

 dows of the Executive Mansion, remarked to some military offi- 

 cers who were present: "Gentlemen, yonder is a national 

 calamity. We have no time to think about it now. We must 

 attend to other things." 



The only important events during the war were two ; one 

 the organization of the National Academy of Sciences, which 

 soon became what Bache had remarked the necessity for in 

 1851, when he said: "An institution of science, supplementary 

 to existing ones, is much needed to guide public action in refer- 

 ence to scientific matters."* 



The other was the passage, in 1862, of the bill for the estab- 

 lishment of scientific educational institutions in every State. 



* Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci., vi, xlviii. 



