LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICIAL SOCIETY. 563 



curious machines ; useful discoveries ; distinguished characters ; print- 

 ing presses ; book stores ; public libraries ; scarce books ; valuable 

 manuscripts ; customs and manners ; the progress of luxury. 



23. The state of population at different periods, and in reference to 

 the place of birth, age, religious persuasion, occupation, and residence, 

 whether in town, village, or country ; the number of houses. 



24. The militia : their numbers, organization, arms, ammunition, and 

 mode of equipment ; arsenals, magazines, powder-mills, founderies, 

 fortifications. 



25. Mendicity : the condition of the poor, and the expense and 

 mode of supporting them ; alms-house, hospitals, penitentiaries ; the 

 state of slavery. 



26. Taxes, the amount, and kinds, paid for the use of the town, 

 county, state, and United States ; the public buildings, and other 

 public improvements ; the income and expenditures of incorporated 

 villages and towns ; the sources and objects, 



27. Antiquities, whether aboriginal or colonial ; curiosities, whether 

 natural or artificial ; drawings and descriptions, of whatever is interest- 

 ing in those respects, especially of ancient fortifications and tumuli, 

 ascertaining the materials composing them j their contents, and the 

 purposes for which they were probably designed. 



28. Meteors, comets, eclipses, earthquakes, tornadoes, tempests, in- 

 undations, volcanic eruptions, seasons of extreme heat and old, or 

 other remarkable events in the natural world ; the present variation of 

 the magnetic needle, and what it has been formerly, and ai what places 

 observed. 



29. Miscellaneous observations not comprehended in the above. 

 You will, Sir, at once perceive the important and comprehensive 



view which the society intend to take of the state of the country ; it 

 will embrace whatever relates to our climate, soil, cultivation, husbandry, 



