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XLIV     JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS.

in the view of the Regents, the strongest grounds for his appointment. Without making comparisons, he was eminently worthy to succeed our earlier and illustrious scientist and Secretary.

Earnest, courteous, painstaking and exact, he allowed the Institution to suffer no detriment at his hands. It is specially significant of his unremitting care for it, that, last year when he was suffering from nervous prostration, in his eagerness to provide for its future welfare he asked the Board to appoint an assistant, who should aid him in his onerous labors, and who, in the event of his permanent disability or death, should assume the government of the Institution until the Board of Regents could take action.

Sir, the sad necessity came far too soon. It has called us together to-day to mourn his loss, recall his virtues and merits, and fill his vacant place.

The Smithsonian Institution, which had but one Secretary before him, will in the flight of time have many. Let me conclude by expressing my conviction that among them there will not be a more excellent Secretary than he, nor a nobler character than that of Spencer Fullerton Baird.

The resolutions were then unanimously adopted by a rising vote.

The second of the foregoing resolutions was then adopted, and immediately thereupon Senator Morrill renewed the nomination of Professor Langley as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

The motion was seconded by Dr. Welling.

In rising to second the motion, Dr. Welling said that he had it in charge from Professor Langley to make to the Board on his behalf a certain representation which seemed to him (professor Langley) to be due in order that the pending question might be considered with entire candor and freedom on all sides. Dr. Welling said that it was well understood that Professor Langley had been nominated by the late Secretary as an assistant secretary of the Institution because of the eminent ability he had shown and the distinguished reputation he had already gained as an original investigator in an important branch of physical science. The achievements which Professor Langley had made in astronomical physics were of a nature to shed luster on his name and do high honor to American science. It would be a great loss to the cause of science and a great loss to the best interests of this Institution if the capacity for original research thus demonstrated by Professor Langley should be smothered by the mere drudgery of official cares and administrative details. It might be proper to state that Professor Langley had brought himself to entertain the proposition now pending before the Board only after much misgiving on his own part, and after much earnest remonstrance on the part of the friends who knew him best as a scientific worker, and who feared that in accepting this office, dignified and inviting as it is, he might be making a mistake for the interests of science and for himself by sacrificing even higher duties and foregoing