OBITUARY NOTICES. 
441 
of the Rev. Levi Meech, of North Stonington, Connecticut. 
After her death he had his niece, Julia N. Avery, a daugh¬ 
ter of his deceased brother Isaac, to keep house for him. 
She gave loving attendance to every wish of the now aged 
and infirm man, as though he had been her own father; 
indeed, very few parents have children as untiring and un¬ 
selfish in their devotion to them as Miss Avery was to her 
uncle. 
After his retirement from the Government service he was 
interested in preparing for the press a set of mathematical 
tables ; also a series of school books designed to extend the 
teaching and use of phonetic spelling, a few of which were 
published at his own expense during the last year of his 
life, in which he makes a very strong plea in favor of spell" 
ing our language according to sound and extends the alpha¬ 
bet so as to make it possible. 
Mr. Avery was a member of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science; of the Philosophical Society 
of Washington and its Mathematical Section ; of the An¬ 
thropological Society of Washington; of the National Geo¬ 
graphic Society ; of the American Association of Inventors 
and Manufacturers; of the Astronomical Society of the 
Pacific Coast; of the American Society for the Extension of 
University Teaching, and of the American Academy of 
Political and Social Science. 
He will be chiefly remembered because of his magnificent 
bequest to the Smithsonian Institution, the amount of which 
cannot be accurately evaluated before the estate is settled, 
but which is generally estimated to be worth anywhere from 
fifty to more than one hundred thousand dollars. In his 
will, dated July 22, 1893, he appoints his niece, Julia N. 
Avery, executrix of the estate, and, after bequeathing small 
sums to various relations with the express condition that 
the legatees acquiesce in his will or forfeit their share en¬ 
tirely, he directs that the remainder of his estate shall go to 
the Smithsonian Institution and its successors forever. He 
suggests that the bequest shall be called “ the Avery fund ” 
58—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 12. 
