_Resolved_, by the senate and house of Representatives of the United States of America, in congress assembled, that the librarian of congress be, and he hereby is, authorised and directed to procure a complete series of reports of all the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and of the circuit and district courts thereof, wich have been heretofore published; as also a complete copy of the Public Statutes at Large of the United States, now being edited by Richard Peters, esq, by authority of congress, the whole to be uniformly bound and lettered, and to cause the same under the direction of the chief justice of the said Supreme Court, to be transmitted and presented to the minister of justice of France, in return and exchange for works of French Law heretofore presented by the minister to the Supreme Court aforesaid. SECTION 2. _And be it further Resolved_, that for the purpose aforesaid, there be appropriated, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars. JOHN W. DAVIS, Speaker of the house of Representatives. G. M. DALLAS, Vice President of the U.S. and President of the Senate. _Approved_, March 4 th, 1846. JAMES K. POLK. * * * * * THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE. _From an article in the New-York Review of September, 1845, by the Hon. Joseph Ingersoll, Senator from Pennsylvania._ In the beginning of the year 1842, an intercourse was opened which has been already productive of rich results, and may in the future confer immense advantages. Dr. Linn, of the United States Senate, sent to the _School of Mines_, of Paris, a specimen of oxide of iron taken from the iron mountain of Missouri. It was done at the request of Mr. Alexandre Vattemare, of that city, who had not a great while before visited Washington, and communicated to Dr. Linn, and through him to the "National Institution," the letter of Mons. Dufresnoy, "Chief Engineer and Director of the Royal School of Mines." It is declared to be the ornament of their collections. In the name of the Council of the School he returns thanks "for this magnificent specimen," which he pronounces, notwithstanding its almost gigantic dimensions, (sixty-six millimetres in diameter,) complete in all its parts. Besides its interest in a mineralogical point of view, he adds that the present of Mr. Linn is highly esteemed by them, because it commences the system of exchange which Mr. Vattemare had sought to establish between all the nations of the new and the old continents, and which he says alone can secure the completion of their collections. From the period when this correspondence took place, Mr. Vattemare seems to have devoted his intelligent and active mind to this object. He has been the means of