Vv 
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
A S many of the readers of this biography may have 
but an indefinite idea of the origin and status 
of the Institution, a brief explanation of them 
will make clearer the conditions under which Baird’s life 
work was done. 
James Smithson, illegitimate son of the Duke of 
Northumberland and Elizabeth Hungerford, niece of the 
Duke of Somerset, after providing for sundry creditors 
and dependents, in default of heirs to his nephew, Henry 
James Hungerford, bequeathed to the United States of 
America in 1826 the whole of his property, amounting 
to about half a million dollars, to found ‘‘at Washington, 
under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Estab- 
lishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge 
among men.” 
In 1835 this property, by the death without heirs of 
the beneficiaries, became due to the United States and 
was paid into the Treasury in December, 1838. 
This fund was afterward invested by the then Secre- 
tary of the Treasury almost wholly in state bonds, 
payment on which was a few years later defaulted, so 
that most of the principal of this trust fund was absolutely 
lost. Congress, however, remedied this misfortune by 
directing the Secretary of the Treasury to pay to the 
authorities of the Institution the income which should 
have been received from the original investment, out of 
the funds permanently payable on account of the debts 
of the United States. 
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