ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXV 
teen years of age, having written and spoken disrespectfully of what 
he called “religious knaves,” and having thus provoked the enmity 
of influential men in his native town, he sought and found a home 
in a more genial climate. The new society began well. Its first 
_ three presidents were Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse, and 
Thomas Jefferson. This society formulated and published an ex- 
cellent plan of scientific work, including a study of the native inhab- 
itants of the country, an examination of the ancient mounds of the 
Western States, and researches in geology and natural history. In 
1796 it offered several prizes, with premiums ranging from fifty to 
one hundred dollars. The first premium offered was “ for the best 
system of liberal education and literary instruction adapted to the 
genius of the government, and best calculated to promote the gen- 
eral welfare of the United States, comprehending, also, a plan for 
instituting and conducting public schools in this country on princi- 
ples of the most extensive utility.” Premiums were also offered for 
improving the method of computing longitudes from lunar distances, 
for the improvement of ship pumps, for the improvement of stoves 
or fire-places, for the best method to prevent the premature decay 
of peach trees, for a treatise on native American vegetable dyes, 
and for the best improvement of lamps. This society published its 
first volume of memoirs in 1771. Among the first contributors was 
David Rittenhouse, the able and ingenious astronomer, and the first 
volume contains a very full account of the Transit of Venus that 
happened June 3, 1769. We find here, also, some account of im- 
provements in the sextant, which appears to have been independ- 
ently invented by Thomas Godfrey, of Philadelphia, in 1730. 
Franklin was an early contributor to the memoirs, his writings 
generally having a very practical bearing. His first paper is on 
the causes and cure of smoky chimneys, and occupies thirty-six 
quarto pages. It is an interesting paper on an important subject, 
much discussed at that time. A correspondent of Franklin de- 
clares its importance by quoting the lines— 
“A smoky house and a scolding wife 
Are two of the greatest ills in life.’’ 
This was followed by other papers of Franklin on the formation 
of the earth, the‘theory of light and heat and of magnetism, and 
on the manufacture of paper. Franklin thought the interior of the 
earth is a heavy fluid, and he imagined magnetism to be a general 
