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XLII     JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS.

2.  Resolved, That this Board do now proceed at once to the election of a Secretary to fill the vacancy created by the death of Professor Baird, and that the rights, powers, and duties of the Secretary thus elected, as well as his salary and emoluments, shall be the same as those prescribed by the existing regulations.

3.  Resolved, That the newly appointed Secretary is hereby requested to make report in writing at the coming annual meeting, on any changes which may seem to him desirable in the organization of the Smithsonian Institution considered in its relations to the National Museum, to the Bureau of Ethnology, and to such scientific aspects of the Fish Commission as he may deem germane to the proper theory of the Institution, and which shall be capable of reduction under its wise and efficient administration--that is, to consider and report how far the existing relations between all r any of these adjuncts and the Smithsonian Institution should be increased, altered, diminished, or abolished in order the better to promote the original and organic design of the Institution as established by Congress.

4.  Resolved, That a committee of three shall be designated by the Chair, to be composed of one Regent appointed from the Senate, one Regent appointed from the House of Representatives, and one Regent appointed from the States, whose duty it shall be to investigate and consider all the questions that may be suggested by the nature or extent of the relations now subsisting between the Smithsonian Institution and any or all of the other objects and adjuncts which are now more or less definitely and completely under its administration, or under the personal administration of its Assistant Secretary; that the said committee, in maturing their views, be invited freely and frankly to acquaint themselves with the opinions and judgments of the Secretary, who, to this end, is hereby requested to communicate to the said committee, in the first instance, any recommendations which he shall submit in pursuance of the preceding resolution; and, finally, that the said committee be instructed to report to the Board at the annual meeting appointed to take place on the 18th of January next, a digest of any additional plans, policies or methods of administration which they shall judge expedient in order to meet any adjustment of relations that shall seem to be required by the best interests of the Institution committed to our charge."

The first resolution in the foregoing series was then taken up for consideration, and on motion of Dr. Gray it was adopted.

Messrs. Gray, Ingalls, and Welling were appointed a committee to draft resolutions in honor of the late Secretary, and that committee, through its chairman, Dr. Gray, reported the following preamble and series of resolutions:

Whereas in the dispensation of Divine Providence, the mortal life of SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD was ended on the 19th of August last, the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, now at the earliest practicable moment assembled, desire to express and record their profound sense of the great loss which this Institution has thereby sustained, any which they personally have sustained, and they accordingly resolve-

1.  That in the lamented death of Professor Baird the Institution is bereaved of its honored and efficient Secretary, who has faithfully and unremittingly devoted to its service his rare administrative abilities for thirty-seven years; that is, almost from the actual foundation of the