The Smithsonian Institution: Its Documentary History ¹

Abstract

THE Smithsonian Institution, the great scientific establishment at Washington, which, in many respects, is to the United States of America what the Royal Society is to this country, was founded under the will of James Smithson (b. 1765), a son of Hugh Smithson, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, by Elizabeth Macie, a cousin of the Percys. The story of how it came to be founded, and of its great work for the United States and for the world, has been more than once recounted in this Journal. An article contributed by the late Dr. G. Brown Goode (NATURE, vol. liii. pp. 257, 281) in January, 1896, contained a veiy full account of the origin of the Institution and of the system of its administration; and, when the same writer edited, under the auspices of the Institution itself, a work on the “History of its First Half-Century,” we took occasion in reviewing it to give a comprehensive outline of the rise and progress of this great centre of scientific energy (NATURE, vol. lviii. p. 271).