REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 33 



reached in the present most unsuitable, provisional site, which is sub- 

 ject to every kind of disturbance due to the neighborhood of the streets 

 of a busy city. 



NECROLOGY. 



I am called upon to record here the death of two Regents of the 

 Institution, Dr. James C. Welling and Dr. Henry Copp6e; also three 

 gentlemen long associated with the work of the Institution, Mr. Will- 

 iam B. Taylor, Col. Garrick Mallery, and Rev. James Owen Dorsey, 

 besides Mr. Robert Stanton Avery, who has bequeathed his estate to 

 the Institution. 



JAMES CLARK WELLING. 



I have lost in Dr. Welling a personal friend, but I only have to 

 speak of him now in his relationship to this Institution — an institution 

 whose character has been partly due to its good fortune in the presence 

 and advice of such men. 



Dr. Welling was one who possessed, beyond anyone else, what may 

 be called the traditions of the Institution; and though these were not 

 of course his exclusive property, in this respect, as in others, his loss 

 can not be supplied. 



The rules of conduct which have been laid down by the Regents, and 

 by the Secretaries who have administered them, are not so much derived 

 from a priori views as they are the outgrowth of accumulated experi- 

 ence; and this experience, it has been thought, is in part, due to the 

 exceptionally long incumbencies of members of the Board as compared 

 with ordinary tenures of office here, and to the continuity of the knowl- 

 edge of its activities, as illustrated in the case of this departed friend. 



James Clark Welling, at the time of his death, September 4, 1894, 

 was nearly 70 years of age. 1 Descended from New England colonial 

 ancestors, a native of one of the Middle States, in early manhood a 

 teacher in the South, and for nearly half a century a resident of the 

 national capital, he was an American of the best type, free from sec- 

 tional bias, personifying the higher traits and tendencies of the nation, 

 loyal to the traditions and aspirations of its founders. 



He was graduated in 1844 from the College of New Jersey, studied 

 law, and was admitted to the bar, but soon afterwards entered upon the 

 profession of journalism. He always retained, however, a strong incli- 

 nation for the study of constitutional and international law, and of 

 politics, and his interest in public affairs was greatly stimulated by his 

 connection for fifteen years with the most important of Washington 

 journals, at that time national in its influence. He became the literary 

 editor of the National Intelligencer in 1850, and was its managing 



1 He was born in Trenton, July 14, 1825. 

 Sm 95 3 



