Proud of his descent he undoubtedly was. In his will he describes his identity himself in these words: “I, James Smithson, son of Hugh, first Duke of Northumberland and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Audley, and niece to Charles the Proud, Duke of Somerset.” He was, however, a man of broad, philosophic mind, in whom a thorough training in the best scientific methods of his day, and associations with leading investigators in Germany and France, and his brother Fellows of the Royal Society of London, had developed a generous appreciation of the value of scholarship and scientific culture. In one of his manuscripts was found the following sentiment, which I have already referred to as prophetic in its ring: “The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father’s side I am a Northumberland, on my mother’s I am related to kings, but this avails me not. _My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten._” These words came to my mind last summer in London when I saw the present Duke of Northumberland, grandson of Smithson’s half-brother, a feeble old man, still one of England’s greatest dignitaries, following in the train of the Prince of Wales, and rising to falter out a feeble speech proposing a vote of thanks to His Royal Highness for presiding at one of the conferences of the International Fisheries’ Exhibition, upon the occasion of an address by Prof. Huxley, president of the Royal Society. The name of the Smithsonian Institution has a world-wide fame; but who outside of English court circles ever heard of Algernon George Percy, Duke of Northumberland? Smithson seems early in life to have become imbued with the scientific spirit of his time. In 1784, while still an undergraduate at Oxford, he made a scientific exploration of the coasts of Scotland in company with a party of geologists. In 1787 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and during the remaining forty-two years of his life, a considerable portion of which was passed upon the continent, in Berlin, Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva, he was the associate of the leading men of science, and devoted himself to research. He made an extensive collection of minerals, which was destroyed by the burning of a portion of the Smithsonian building in 1865, and always carried with him a portable chemical laboratory. His contributions to science are included in twenty-seven memoirs, chiefly upon topics in mineralogy and organic chemistry, but a number of them relating to applied science and the industrial arts.