274 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



lively feeble and limited, and not practically utilized.* This inter- 

 esting digest presents one of the earliest and clearest theoretical 

 statements we have, of the correlation and transformation of the 

 physical forces; including with these the so-called organic forces. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



By an Act of Congress approved August 10, 1846, the liberal 

 bequest to the United States, for the promotion of Science > by James 

 Smithson of London, England, was appropriated to the foundation 

 of the Institution bearing his name ; the establishment being made 

 to comprise the chief dignitaries of the Government as the super- 

 vising body, and a Board of Regents being created for conducting 

 the business of the Institution after completing its organization. 

 As the testator had bequeathed his fortune, f in simple terms "for 

 the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," there arose 

 not unnaturally a great diversity of opinion both among Congress- 

 men, and among the Regents, as to the most desirable method of 

 executing the purpose of the Will: and the organizing Act was 

 itself a sort of compromise, after many years of discussion and 

 disagreement in both branches of Congress. To literary men, no 

 instrument of knowledge could be so important as an extensive 

 Library : to the professional, a seat of education or public instruc- 

 tion general or special supplemented by elaborate courses of 

 public lectures, appeared the obvious and necessary means of dif- 

 fusing useful learning, to the "practical," a large agricultural 

 and polytechnic institute supplemented perhaps by a museum, 

 was the only fitting plan of developing the resources of our coun- 

 try: to the artistic, extensive galleries of art were the most worthy 

 and instructive objects of patronage. The Regents sought counsel 

 from the distinguished and the learned : and several of them applied 

 to Professor Henry for his opinion. He gave the subject a careful 



* Proceed. Am. Phil. Soc. Dec. 20, 1844, vol. iv. pp. 127-129. This appears to be the 

 first as it is probably the best analysis of physical energy, which has been 

 proposed. Twenty years later, a similar analysis (with certainly no improvement 

 in the classification) was adopted by Professor Tait, in an essay on "Energy;" 

 (North British Review, 1864, vol. xl. art. iii. p. 191, of Am. edition :) and by Dr. Balfour 

 Stewart, in his Elementary Treatise on Heat, Oxford, 1866: (book iii. chap. v. art. 388, 

 p. 354.) 



fThe whole amount of the bequest was a trifle over 100,000 pounds, or about 

 540,000 dollars. 



