14 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



The Institute counts five presidents amongst its honored 

 dead. They are men whose names are in themselves a 

 legacy, — Daniel Appleton Wliite, Asahel Huntington, 

 Francis Peabody, Henry Wheatland, Edmund B. Will- 

 son. Undoubtedly the Institute owes its origin to Henry 

 Wheatland, who was its organizer and its secretary for 

 twenty years, before his presidency of twenty-five years 

 began. He had been an honored member of the old 

 Historical Society, and was the creator of the Natural 

 History Society. He brought about the union of the two, 

 and, with untiring labor and unremitting thought, welded 

 their elements into the substantial structure which he left, 

 forty-five years later, ready to our hands. 



The list of our contributors — the list of topics treated 

 in these seventy odd volumes of ours — is quite too long 

 for introduction here. Figures tell little except to those 

 who know their secrets. The best names in Essex County 

 will be found to grace our pages. Besides memoirs of 

 our leading men, prepared by Judge Lord, Dr. Briggs, 

 Charles W. Upham, the Rev. Mr. Willson ; besides com- 

 memorative addressei delivered by Judge Story on the 

 two himdredth, and by Judge Endicott on the two hun- 

 dred and fiftieth, anniversaries of the landing of Ende- 

 cott ; by Abner C. Goodell, jr., on the Historical Society's 

 half-century anniversary and on the centennial of the 

 meeting; in Salem of the First Provincial Congress of 

 Massachusetts Bay ; by James Kimball, whose grand- 

 father was an actor in the scene, on the centennial of the 

 destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor ; besides com- 

 memorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Natural 

 History Society, with a review by Professor Morse of the 

 progress of natural science during the last half-century ; 

 of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the land- 

 ing of Winthrop ; of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 



