construed according to the general import and evident intention of all its parts.

If we can construe the law from its own provisions, it would be exceedingly unsafe and improper to interpret it by reference to the opinions of a portion only of those who voted for it, being the minor part of them. To do this would be to make the opinions of a few control the acts and intentions of the majority as expressed in the law, and in effect to give to those few the law making ower. In the present case the evident intention was to carry out the pur ose of Smithson's will, name ly: "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

The title of the act, its preamble and provisions, would have been palpably absurd, if their object had been only or chiefly to found a great library. To describe a library as an institution "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," would be a preposterous abuse of terms. So, too, "to erect a suitable building of sufficient size, with suitable rooms or halls for the reception and arrangement, upon a liberal scale, of objects of natural history, geological, mineralogical, and botanical specimens, classed and arranged so as to facilitate the study of them, with a chemical laboratory, lecture rooms, &c.," as provided in sections 5 and 6, is wholly inconsistent with the idea of an institution, of which a library is to be the principal agent.

It is true that the eighth section of the act authorizes an application of an annual sum, not exceeding $25,000, for the gradual formation of a library. This is in great disproportion to the various objects before recited in the act, and if it had been mandatory, would have made the general authority and discretion given to the Regents in the ninth section, absurd and nugatory, and would indeed have equally defeated the other provisions before mentioned. Such an appropriation, if made, would establish a great library, but not such an institution as is indicated by the title of the bill, or warranted by its various provisions. Instead of a Secretary with assistants, it should have provided for a Librarian, with an assistant as secretary, and assistant librarians. Instead of providing for a building on a liberal scale, with suitable rooms or halls for a chemical laboratory, lecture rooms, &c., not indicating the library as of paramount importance, but according to the order of enumeration, placing it after other objects, the law would have declared it to be of primary importance, and designated the other objects as incidental or subsidiary to the Library. The act, in its various terms and provisions, does not seem to have been the result of plans entirely harmonious and consistent, but bears some marks of conflicting opinions; and the large discretion allowed in the ninth section appears to have been intended to give to the Regents the authority to reconcile and determine those difficulties which Congress could not avoid or provide for, to their own satisfaction.

Nothing, however, seems to be clearer than that the Legislature did not intend a public library to be the principal instrument of the Institution. The third section enacts that "the business of the Institution shall be conducted at the city of Washington by a Board of Regents." The terms of Smithson's will requires that Washington should be the locality of the Institution; but, if this section had reference to a public library, absorbing almost the whole interest of the fund, would

such language have been employed? If a library at Washington was to be established, it was wholly unnecessary to provide that the business of the Institution should be conducted there, since the business of a library must be conducted where it is placed. The use of this language would seem to imply active transactions and not to refer to books. The application of $25,000 annually, (five-sixths of the whole income at the date of the act) to the purchase of books, would be inconsistent with, and subversive of the whole tenor of all that precedes the eighth section. Section ninth is singularly comprehensive, and appears to indicate a consciousness on the part of the framers of the bill, that its provisions might be proved by experience to be incongruous.

For this they provided the true remedy by investing the Regents with full power to use their judgment in the premises, subject only to the purpose of the will of Smithson, and so much of the law as was mandatory and peremptory, "all other provisions to the contrary, notwithstanding."

On the whole, therefore, the Committee think that neither the law nor the will of Smithson required the Regents to consider a great library as the paramount object of the Institution.

Its purpose requires means of exciting and sustaining research, of stimulating and directing original enquiries, the results of which constitute an increase of knowledge, and the publication of which diffuses it.

Scientific researches are often supposed by the uninformed to be of little or no real importance, and indeed are frequently ridiculed as barren of all practical utility. But nothing is more mistaken than this. The most valuable and productive of the arts of life, the most important and wonder-working inventions of modern times, owe their being and value to scientific investigations. By these have been discovered physical truths and laws, the intelligent application of which to practical inventions has given immense benefits to the world. The germs of these valuable improvements and inventions have been found and developed by scientific research, the original forms of which have often seemed to the many to be as idle and useless as they were curious. A proposition relating to the pendulum, which for many years remained only a curious theoretical relation, ultimately furnished a unit for the standard measures of States and nations. The discovery that a magnetic needle could be moved by a galvanic current, seemed for a long time more curious than useful, and yet it contained the germ of all that was afterwards developed in the telegraph. It has been well remarked that numerous applications and inventions always result from the discovery of a scientific principle, so that there are many Fultons for every Franklin.

There is no branch of industrial art which does not owe for the most part its improved processes to such investigations, although the artizans who employ them are often ignorant of their true source. Smithson, who was himself a man of science and research, and a contributor to the philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, well knew this. The members of Congress who framed the law were not ignorant of it, and the provisions for a chemical laboratory, and collections of natural

history, proved that they looked to the prosecution of such inquiries under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution.

Wisely, therefore, did the first Board of Regents propose, in order to

INCREASE KNOWLEDGE

First. To stimulate men of talent to make original researches, by offering suitable rewards for memoirs containing new truths, and to publish these and such other papers of suitable character as should be offered to the Institution.

Second. To cause particular researches to be made by competent persons.

And in order to DIFFUSE KNOWLEDGE

First. "To publish occasionally a series of practical reports on the progress of the different branches of knowledge."

Second. "To publish occasionally separate treatises on subjects of gen

eral interest."

The results which have been produced by the Institution have received the approbation of the learned in every part of the civilized world, and fully justify the wisdom of the plan adopted by the Regents, and successfully carried into operation by the Secretary.

As a proof of this, we need only state the following facts given in the last report of the Regents to Congress.

"The Institution has promoted astronomy, by the aid furnished the researches which led to the discovery of the true orbit of the new planet Neptune, and the determination of the perturbations of this planet and the other bodies of the solar system, on account of their mutual attraction. It has also aided the same branch of science by furnishing instruments and other facilities to the Chilian expedition, under Lieutenant Gillis; and by preparing and publishing an ephemeris of Neptune, which has been adopted by all the astronomers of the world.

"It has advanced geography, by providing the scientific traveller with annual lists of the occultations of the principal stars, by the moon, for the determination of longitude; by the preparation of tables for ascertaining heights with the barometer; and by the collection and publication of important facts relative to the topography of different parts of the country, particularly of the valley of the Mississippi.

"It has established an extended system of meteorology, consisting of a corps of several hundred intelligent observers, who are daily noteing the phases of the weather in every part of the continent of North America. It has imported standard instruments, constructed hundreds of compared thermometers, barometers, and psychrometers, and has furnished improved tables and directions for observing with these instruments the various changes of the atmosphere, as to temperature, pressure, moisture, &c. It has collected, and is collecting, from its observers, an extended series of facts which are yielding deductions of great interest in regard to the climate of this country and the meteorology of the globe.

"The Institution has advanced "the science of geology, by its researches and original publications. It has made a preliminary exploration of the remarkable region on the upper Missouri river called the Bad Lands, and is now printing a descriptive memoir on the extra

ordinary remains which abound in that locality. It has assisted in explorations relative to the distribution in this country of the remains of microscopic animals found in immense quantities in different parts of the United States.

"It has made important contributions to botany, by means of the published results of explorations in Texas, New Mexico, and California; and by the preparation and publication of an extended memoir, illustrated with colored engravings, on the sea-plants of the coast of North America.

"It has published several important original papers on physiology, comparative anatomy, zoology, and different branches of descriptive natural history; and has prepared and printed, for distribution to travellers, a series of directions for collecting and preserving speci

mèns.

"It has advanced terrestrial magnetism, by furnishing instruments for determining the elements of the magnetic force, to various exploring expeditions; and by publishing the results of observations made under its direction, at the expense of the government.

"It has collected and published the statistics of the libraries of the United States; and perfected a plan of stereotyping catalogues, which will render effective, as a combined whole, all the scattered libraries of the country.

"The Institution has also been instrumental in directing attention to American antiquities, and has awakened such an interest in the subject as will tend to the collection and study of all the facts which can be gathered relative to the ancient inhabitants of this continent. It has also rendered available for the purposes of the ethnologist and philanthropist the labors of our missionaries among the Dakotas, by publishing a volume on the language of this tribe of Indians, and has done good service to comparative philology by the distribution of directions for collecting Indian vocabularies.

"It has established an extended system of literary and scientific exchanges, both foreign and domestic, and annually transmits, between the most distant societies and individuals, hundreds of packages of valuable works. It has presented its own publications, free of expense, to all the first-class libraries of the world, and thus rendered them accessible, as far as possible, to all persons who are interested in their study. No restriction of copyright has been placed on their republication; and the truths which they contain are daily finding their way to the general public, through the labors of popular writers and teachers. The dis tribution of its publications and its system of exchanges has served not only to advance and diffuse knowledge, but also to increase the reputation, and, consequently, the influence of our country; to promote a kindly and sympathetic feeling between the New World and the Oldalike grateful to the philosopher and the philanthropist.

"These are the fruits of what is called the system of active operations of the Institution, and its power to produce other and continuous results is only limited by the amount of the income which can be appropriated to it, since each succeeding year has presented new and important fields for its cultivation. All the anticipations indulged with regard to it have

been fully realized; and after an experience of six years, there can now be no doubt of the true policy of the Regents in regard to it."

Reports of a more popular character have been published, or are in preparation, which are well calculated to diffuse knowledge. Such is the report on the recent improvements in the chemical arts, by Messrs. Booth & Morfit, prepared and published under the direction of the Institution. The Secretary has said of it "that though chiefly intended to benefit the practical man, yet it will be found interesting to the general reader, as exhibiting the cotemporaneous advance of science and art, and the dependence of the latter upon the former for the improvemenr of its most important processes." Among the subjects of which it treats, may be mentioned fuel and furnaces, glass-making and pottery, cements, metals and their manufacture, chemicals, textile fabrics, mineral and organic manures. This work has been stereotyped, and besides those which are distributed on the plan of exchange, copies are offered for sale at the mere cost of printing, paper, and commission. Another report which is in preparation, on the forest trees of North America, giving their economical and ornamental uses and values, their history, mode of propagation, &c., &c., will supply to agriculturalists a work of great interest and importance which has long been a desideratum. Other reports have been prepared and will be ready for the press as soon as the funds can be appropriated for printing them.

The Committee need not repeat in detail all the parts of the plan of organization, but may mention that it included the exchange of the published transactions of the Institution, with those of literary and scientific societies and establishments; and provided for a museum and library, to consist of a complete collection of the transactions and proceedings of all the learned societies in the world, of the more important current periodical publications and of other works necessary to scientific investigations, thus employing the instrumentalities pointed out in the law, as means of increasing and diffusing knowledge, entirely consistent with, and necessary to, the plan of research and publication.

This plan is no longer experimental; it has been tested by experience; its success is acknowledged by all who are capable of forming a correct estimate of its results, and the Institution has every encouragement to pursue steadily its system of stimulating, assisting, and publishing research.

Whether the equal division of the income of the Institution, according to the plan of the compromise resolutions, should be observed after the completion of the building, is a question submitted to your Committee for report, and proper to be decided by the Board during the present year. The Committee think that while moderate appropriations should be annually made for the gradual increase of the library, and for other objects specified in the fifth section of the act establishing the Institution, so as to carry out in good faith the intention of Congress, it is not advisable to make the equal division of the income as proposed by the compromise resolutions.

The public generally, and even the Regents, most probably, do not know how small the funds of the Institution are in proportion to what is required of it, and the expense necessarily connected with so large a building.