It need not be said that the accomplishment of these effects was the result of long continued effort on the part of men of unusual ability, energy and personal influence. No board of trustees or regents, no succession of officers serving out their terms in rotation could have developed from a chaos of conflicting opinions, a strongly individualized establishment like the Smithsonian Institution. The names of Joseph Henry and Spencer F. Baird are so thoroughly identified with that of the Institution that their biographies combined would form an almost complete history of its operations. A thirty-two years’ term of uninterrupted administrative service has been rendered by one, thirty-four years by the other. It is very doubtful whether any other institution has ever had the benefit of such an uninterrupted administration of thirty-eight years, beginning with its birth and continuing in an unbroken line of consistent policy a career of increasing usefulness and enterprise. Joseph Henry, the first secretary, entered upon his duties at the end of the year 1846, a man already famous as an investigator in physical science, a professor of fourteen years’ standing in Princeton College, and recognized as eminent in scientific and general acquirements. From the age of forty-seven to that of seventy-nine, his life was merged in that of the Institution. Professor Asa Gray has pointed out so clearly the deep impression which he made upon the Institution while it was yet plastic, that I venture to quote his words in order to explain the character of this new force in the evolution of good results from the Smithson benefaction. “Some time before his appointment,” writes Professor Gray, “he had been requested by members of the Board of Regents to examine the will of Smithson and to suggest a plan of organization by which the object of the bequest might, in his opinion, best be realized. He did so, and the plan he drew was in their hands when he was chosen secretary. The plan was based on the conviction ‘that the intention of the donor was to advance science by original research and publication; that the establishment was for the benefit of mankind generally, and that all unnecessary expenditures on local objects would be violations of the trust.’ His ‘Programme of Organization’ was submitted to the Board of Regents in the following year, was adopted as its governing policy, and has been reprinted in full or in part in almost every annual report. If the Institution is now known and praised throughout the world of science and letters, if it is fulfilling the will of its founder and the reasonable expectations of the nation which accepted and established the trust, the credit is mainly due to the practical wisdom, the catholic spirit, and the indomitable perseverance of its first secretary, to whom the establishing act gave much power of shaping ends, which as rough-hewn by Congress were susceptible of various diversion. Henry took