Professor Henry was chairman. General Sherman, Admiral Jenkins, J. E. Hilgard, and a number of other men whose names are national property were members of this club. The general method was to have an address or paper by some member of the club, and afterward a social meeting with refreshments furnished by the host of that evening. They were most enjoyable evenings. However, in the course of time, it began to be felt by some of the members that the tax on the less wealthy members of the club was too great. The meetings were held fortnightly, and in the course of the season they would come around several times to the same member. There were others who wished very much to join, but could hardly be accommodated in the houses of the old members; and after more or less discussion about it Professor Henry. suggested to some of the men who brought the matter to his attention that they should appoint a committee to organize a society and to have the whole subject laid before the club, to form an organization that would omit the refreshment part of the entertainment; that would make for scientific purposes; and that would be available for any scientific man, either visitor or resident of Washington, and would be restricted to men of science.

The result of this was that a committee was formed whose report you have heard read by the Secretary. The meeting was held in the Regent's room of the Smithsonian Institution, and Professor Henry, by unanimous vote, was made chairman.

A skeleton of a constitution and by-laws, which had been prepared by the Committee of the club, was presented at the meeting and adopted with some amendments. Then General Barnes, who was Surgeon-General, and was one of the members, was good enough to offer us more commodious quarters in the city. In those days coming over to the Smithsonian building, especially at night, was something of a task. The paths were not paved; if it happened to be rainy it was a very muddy walk indeed. There was a rather rickety bridge at Tenth Street over a very bad smelling canal which we all had to cross in order to get into the Smithsonian grounds. I do not know whether any of the present members know that that part of Washington was for

merly known and is still known to old residents as "The Island" because it was separated from the city by the James Creek Canal. It is that broad road just south of the Center Market that was formerly the location of this canal, which formed a sort of semicircle and came around the museum grounds enclosing the more elevated land on which the Smithsonian Institution stands, and then went southward through the wide lowland nearly parallel with New Jersey Avenue, Southwest, to rejoin the Potomac, where a small remnant not yet filled in still exists. At that time nearly all of the members of the Society lived in the city and therefore found it desirable to have the place of meeting where they would not have to go through the Smithsonian grounds, often through a considerable amount of mud.

Probably those names that were read by the Secretary mean somewhat less to the members of the Society at present than they meant to us in those days, and I have made an analysis of the committee of the founders, which will, perhaps, throw a little light on the subject.

From the Smithsonian Institution there were of course, Prof. Joseph Henry and William B. Taylor, who was a very erudite man and had a considerable part in the activities of the Institution, T. R. Peale, S. F. Baird, Theodore Gill, and myself. From the Geological Survey (there was at that time no National Survey) came Dr. F. V. Hayden; the Signal Service was represented by General A. J. Myer; from the office of the Nautical Almanac came J. H. C. Coffin, whose great work on the Winds of the Globe is well known to all meteorologists.

From the Army there were General Sherman, General Benêt, General Humphreys, General George H. Elliott, General Casey, General Parke, and General Meigs, who built the Cabin John Bridge and had a good deal to do with many of our other principal buildings here in the District; from the Army Medical Museum staff and the Medical Department of the Army there were Dr. Woodward, a microscopist of high reputation; Dr. Otis, who was a distinguished anthropologist; Dr. J. S. Billings, to whom we owe the Index Medicus; and Dr. J. K. Barnes, who was SurgeonGeneral of the Army. Then there were Admiral Foote, Admiral

Sands, and Admiral Jenkins, and from the Naval Observatory Asaph Hall, Simon Newcomb, and William Harkness. These men were all distinguished. I suppose no Society of such a small number of persons as this ever had quite so many distinguished men in proportion to the whole number. I have always felt it a very great honor to have been permitted to join with them in calling myself a founder of the Society.

The original number o founders, that is, those whose signatures were on the list for the formation of the Society, was 43, including Professor Henry who proposed the name, Philosophical Society of Washington, giving to the adjective its original meaning implying the inclusion of all branches of science. No list of members was published in the Bulletin until 1874 when the number was 128, there having been four deaths of members, but during that time 85 additional members became connected with the Society. Professor Henry presided over the Society until his death in 1878.

The Bulletin, which was issued shortly after the formation of the Society, when enough material had accumulated to form a volume, was reprinted at Professor Henry's suggestion, as a volume of the Miscellaneous Collections of the Smithsonian Institution. That procedure was continued during Professor Baird's lifetime. The publications were made up, edited, and printed by the Society, the Smithsonian Institution publication being made by the use of stereotype plates. The reprint was not issued until 1888.

Meetings were held at the offices of the Surgeon-General in the old Ford Theater Building, and were extremely interesting. The Society was made up of men who could say something interesting on almost every branch of science.

We had some very remarkable work presented to the Society. We were privileged, I think, to have the first testing of the telephone. Mr. Bell was introduced by one of the members of the Society. A telephone wire and receiver were strung up in the room where we had our meeting and the transmitter was taken off into another room at some distance and each member of the Society was enabled to hear communications that came from the

other room. That was before 1876, when the first public exhibition of the telephone took place at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia.

Among other things, I remember a paper by Dr. A. F. A. King in which the mosquito theory of the transmission of malaria was fully set forth. Dr. King was one of those who originated the theory that the disease is transmitted by these insects. Of course, the theory required proof, and it was not till a good many years afterward that proof was furnished by contributors from the Medical Corps of the Army and others.

Most of the papers in the early days were intended to be published elsewhere than in the Bulletin of the Society. They were read there for the information of the members, and when the Bulletin was printed, it would give the title of the paper and state the place in which it was published, and in that way reference could be had from the Bulletin to the place of publication of anything that was read before the Society. At first, of course, the pecuniary resources of the Society were not great and it could not afford to publish many papers, but owing to the fact that most of the members were members of the Government staff under one Bureau or another, and that the publication of their results would naturally have to be through Government agencies, the system adopted was fairly satisfactory. The Society was a great boon to all of us who desired to know something of what was going on in the departments of science with which we were not personally acquainted.

I think that there were none of us but derived welcome and interesting information, and added to our store of knowledge from the communications that came from other members in quite different fields of work. I ought perhaps to mention one of the remarkable things that were done by members of the Society at that time. This was the work of Dr. Woodward of the Army Medical Museum in microscopy. He was the first, as far as I know at all events in this country, and I think the first anywhere to succeed in getting a diatom photograph of a perfection and size that would reveal, for instance, all the almost invisible, complete and beautiful ornamentation with which it is

provided. Dr. Woodward brought forth his new slides and explained the working of the modifications that he made to his microscope in order to produce this work, and then threw on the screen the beautiful figures, sometimes of an almost invisible diatom enlarged to six feet high, showing every detail of its beautiful structure. They were very interesting indeed. In fact I might go on for a long time with reminiscences of what was brought before us; but we are to hear from others of what developed in the Society as it grew larger and larger and the number of scientific men increased, and how bodies of our members formed other societies and gave to them independent lives.