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for much of the time he officiated regularly in vacant churches, in Massachusetts or Connecticut.

He was an industrious compiler and a fluent writer, and among his numerous publications the following of special historical interest will be remembered:-Life of Sir Charles Henry Frankland (1865), Our National Song (1869), Memoir of Mrs. Susannah Rowson (1870), Gazetteer of Massachusetts (1874), History of the Town of Dunstable (1877). He left in manuscript, incomplete, a History of Hopkinton, and a Nason Genealogy. He was also for many years a frequent lecturer before lyceums, on historical, musical and variously practical themes.

He was married, in November, 1836, to Miss Mira Ann, daughter of John Bigelow, of Framingham, one of the owners of the paper-mill where he learned his trade. She survives him, with three of their four sons and two daughters.

Dr. Charles Rau, Curator of the department of Antiquities in the United States National Museum at Washington, died on the 25th of July, 1887, at the age of 61.

He was born in Belgium in 1826, and was a nephew of Karl Heinrich Rau, the distinguished Professor of Political Science at Heidelberg. In 1848, he came to this country, and for some time found employment as a teacher in or near St. Louis, as afterwards in New York City. While living in the latter place, he began to contribute to the Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution articles upon archæological subjects, to which his maturer studies had been devoted. By this means he became known, both in this country and in Europe, as an authority in this department of science, especially in the study of the American stone age; and in 1876, he was attached permanently to the Smithsonian Institution as Assistant in Archæology. His appointment as chief of the archæological division of the National Museum, an outgrowth of the Smithsonian, followed in 1879.

Dr. Rau's shorter contributions to the Smithsonian Reports, from 1863 to 1877, have been collected in a volume entitled Articles on Anthropological Subjects. He also published, in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, an account of the Archæological Collections of the National Museum (1876), a monograph on the Palenque Tablet (1879), and a memoir on Prehistoric Fishing (1884). Some valuable Observations on Lapidarian Sculptures appeared in volume V. (1881) of the Contributions to North American Ethnology in Powell's Survey. Besides these Government publications, a series of articles which he wrote in 1875 for Harper's Magazine was reprinted in 1876, with the title, Early Man in Europe. At the time of his death he was engaged on an encyclopædic work, designed to cover the whole field of American archæology.

His scientific method as an investigator and his thorough knowledge of and devotion to his subject insure for him special and honorable remembrance.

During the spring and early summer of 1887, he was ill from pulmonary disease. He also suffered from stone, and went for treatment to Philadelphia, where he died. He was never married.

Dr. Rau was elected a member of this Society in October, 1878.

Professor Spencer Fullerton Baird was born in Reading, Pa., February 3, 1823, the son of Samuel Baird, Jr., a lawyer of Reading, who died some ten years later. His first name was derived from a direct ancestor on his mother's side, the Rev. Dr. Elihu Spencer, of New Jersey.

He was graduated from Dickinson College, at Carlisle, Pa., in 1840, having exhibited already a zeal for natural history which determined his future career. His prime interest was in ornithology, but for several years after graduation he gave himself to general studies in zoölogy and botany, and to long pedestrian tours for the collection of specimens; he pursued, also, a partial course in medicine.

From such occupations he was soon called to a Frofessorship of Natural Science in Dickinson College, and after a brief tenure of this position left it in July, 1850, to accept the Assistant Secretaryship of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, with which his name and work were thenceforth identified. In May, 1878, after the death of Professor Henry, he was elected by unanimous vote of the Regents, Secretary of the Institution, and in this office he continued till his death.

Latterly much of his time was absorbed in the duties of U. S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, a position to which he was appointed by President Grant in 1871.

In summarizing his qualifications as an officer of the Smithsonian, his lifelong friend, Professor Dana, emphasizes justly his breadth of knowledge in the sciences of nature, his sympathy with other workers over the land, his indefinite powers of work, his systematic methods, and his eagerness to make the Institution national in the highest sense of the term, and also scientifically and practically useful." Along with the multiform activity imposed by these standards were his unsalaried services as Commissioner of Fisheries, devoted especially to the philanthropic purpose of enlarging that valuable section of the food-supply of the world.

His personal contributions to the literature of science were voluminous and important,—the most elaborate being his account of the Birds of North America, prepared in conjunction with Messrs. Cassin and Lawrence in 1858, and his more complete History of North American Birds, issued in 1874, with the assistance of Messrs. Brewer and Ridgway. His original work in the description of North American mammals and reptiles was also of signal value; and his numerous official Reports abounded in original matter of the first quality. From 1870 to 1878, he was the scientific editor of the periodicals issued by the Harpers of New York, 1 Amer. Journal of Science, Oct. 1887, 320.

as also of their Annual Record of Science and Industry, and used the opportunity to bring out a vast amount of instructive, critical work.

Professor Baird's scientific eminence was recognized by many foreign societies, which enrolled him in their ranks. His membership in this Society dates from April, 1880.

His manifold and responsible public labors, with unremitting private studies, undermined his health. When he went in June, 1887, to Woods Holl, Massachusetts, the chief summer-station of the U. S. Fish Commission, he was evidently much broken: and his death occurred there, on August 19th, in the 65th year of his age.

He married Mary, daughter of Inspector-General Sylvester Churchill, of the U. S. Army, who survives him with one daughter.

For the Council,

FRANKLIN B. DEXTER.

3

ESTIMATES OF POPULATION IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES.

BY FRANKLIN B. DEXTER.

IN accordance with custom the member of the Council to whom is entrusted the duty of formulating their Report is permitted to present therewith a discussion of some subject of general historical interest, for which he is more directly responsible. The present writer offers, therefore, some observations on the Estimates of Population in the American Colonies.

I am not aware that any attempt has been made to discuss in a connected way the scattered estimates of the numbers of inhabitants from time to time in the several colonies. which afterwards became the United States of America. The materials at command are so meagre as to discourage inquiry, but a conviction that a beginning should be made in the arrangement of the data we have, and a hope of opening the way for useful deductions, have moved me to offer this study.

Certain elements of difficulty are inseparable from the attempt. In America, under the colonial regime, there was but little systematic collection by authority of trustworthy population-statistics. For long periods, in most of the colonies, there was an utter dearth of even the pretence of knowledge; while such estimates as we have, there is reason to suspect, are often intentionally misleading, when officials, on the one hand of the boastful, or on the other hand of the timid type, thought to serve some interest by exaggeration or by understatement. In many of the returns,

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