70 
tained must necessarily be applied to astronomical observa- 
tions. And, indeed, I may anticipate the order of this 
narrative by adding here that when, at last, Congress did 
appropriate the means for erecting an Astronomical Ob- 
servatory, and subsequently for its support, it was “under 
a fictitious name; the authors of the laws intending an 
Astronomical Observatory, and being well aware that the 
funds would be so applied, but causing the insertion of the 
proviso in the one case, and of the feigned name in the 
other, for the purpose of prevénting the institution from 
being attributed to the influence of Mr. Adams.* 
In 1840, precisely fifteen years after that first message to 
Congress in which he had advocated the establishment of a 
National Observatory by government, Mr. Adams, being 
Chairman of the Committee on the Smithsonian Fund, 
made a second report, in which, after recounting all the 
principal facts connected with the bequest and its acceptance, 
he again advocated the views which he had so often urged. 
But while the question was pending, a resolution was 
passed by the Senate appointing a Joint Committee on the 
Subject of the Smithsonian bequest. The House, in cour- 
tesy, concurred, and appointed on its own part the members 
of the Select Committee of which Mr. Adams was Chair- 
man to be members of the Joint Committee. It may readily 
be imagined that the two portions of the Committee were 
unable to agree ; and it was finally decided that each of the 
two component parts should present its own report; and 
while Mr. Adams reported a series of resolutions pre- 
seribing the investment and management of the fund, and 
directing that the first appropriation of interest-money should 
a _be “applied for the erection of an Astronomical Observatory, 
toon Memoir of the Life of J. Q. Adams. 
a “sixth Congress, Ist st Session, Rep. No. 277. 
