VIENNA, February 9, 1864. MY DEAR SIR: Permit me to enclose here an invitation to join in a subscription for a gold honorary medal to be presented to our most worthy Professor Ch. Fr. Ph. von Martius, of Munich, on his fiftieth anniversary of medical doctorship on the 30th of March, 1864. Our most honored friends on the other side of the Atlantic should not fail in the list; only I am sorry that by various impediments I was prevented from writing at an earlier period. It is now so late that only by very good luck it will be possible that an answer may arrive previously to the 15th of March, to be entered in the first list which must be printed, embellished, and then bound up, and sent to Munich from Vienna before the 30th of March. Whatever is brought to notice later than the 30th will be appended, and what comes to hand after the 30th up to the end of June will be given in the first complementary report to be published on the 1st of July. Nothing will be lost, as even what comes after that period will be published afterwards. Every subscriber, of course, will have a bronze copy of the medal, and the votary tablet sent to him. Subscriptions should be three florins Austrian silver money, or more, which is about one and a half dollar American silver. By this time you may already have received our last box with tertiary fossil types of several localities of the Vienna basin, being a joint parcel from the Imperial Mineralogical Cabinet and our own Geological Institution. I am happy to hear you have now the Ainsa Tucson meteoric iron. I shall send some of these days a paper of mine on the Carleton Tucson, which appeared in the Vienna Academy Proceedings. I enclose impression from the surface, cut, polished, and etched, and galvanographed positively and negatively. We shall be happy, as soon as you may fix on cutting some slices off the block, to receive a bit from you for our Imperial Mineralogical Museum of the Ainsa Tucson too. With all the most cordial wishes, ever most truly yours, Professor JOSEPH HENRY, W. HAIDINGER. Secretary to the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. OFFICE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, MY DEAR SIR: Absence from home and subsequent indisposition have prevented my acknowledging receipt of your letter of 19th ultimo at an earlier date. The settlement you have made of Mr. Kennicott's account is quite satisfactory. There was a small deficiency in consequence of a change in the rate of exchange when your draft reached me, but that matter can be arranged when we receive Mr. Mactavish's final statement of Mr. Kirkby's account. The kind expressions of thanks contained in your letter are very gratifying. We have always felt pleasure in promoting scientific research; but, in Mr. Kennicott's case, this was enhanced by his amiable character and prudence. It is no easy part to play, going as a stranger into a territory inhabited by men bound to a foreign government, and with exclusive views on many points. But Mr. Kennicott knew how to meet the circumstances; and from his arrival among us until his departure was always popular, and I believe inspired a sincere friendship and esteem among those with whom he most associated. If in Washington, pray offer him my kind regards. Hoping some day to have the honor and pleasure of forming your personal acquaintance, believe me, sir, very truly yours, EDW. M. HOPKINS. JOSEPH HENRY, Esq., Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. The object of this appendix is to illustrate the operations of the Institution by reports of lectures and extracts from correspondence, as well as to furnish information of a character suited especially to the meteorological observers and other persons interested in the promotion of knowledge. LECTURES. BRIEF ABSTRACT OF A SERIES OF SIX LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE, DELIVERED AT THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION IN MARCH, 1864. BY WILLIAM D. WHITNEY, PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT IN YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN. THE scientific study of language is of modern date. Only its scanty and imperfect germs are to be found in ancient times. It lacked that wide and comprehensive basis of observed and collected facts on which alone such a science can be founded. The active and searching curiosity of the past century, with the facilities for investigation given by trade, travel, and philanthropic effort, could not but call it into being. No single circumstance has so powerfully aided its development as the introduction of Sanskrit to the knowledge of Europe. This, the most ancient and primitive of Indo-European tongues, laid the sure foundation of the comparative philology of the Indo-European family, out of which has grown the general science of language. The objects of this science are twofold: To discover the nature and history of language itself, and to elicit information respecting human history. Both are invested with a very high degree of importance. The value of language to man, and the absorbing interest of inquiry into its character, are palpable, and attested by the labors and speculations of generations of scholars and thinkers. It has also quite recently been found that language is the principal means of ethnological investigation, of tracing out the deeds and fates of men during the prehistoric ages. Not only does it determine the fact and the degree of relationship among nations, but it gives information which can be obtained in no other way respecting their moral and intellectual character, and the growth of their civilization. Linguistic science, as a branch of the study of human history, embraces the whole race at every period of its history. All spoken or recorded speech is its material. The dialects of the lowliest as well as the most highly endowed races are its care. It would fain hold up and study every single fact in the light of every other related fact, since only thus can all be fully understood. To survey in detail, in these lectures, the whole field of linguistic science will be, of course, impracticable. We can only attempt to lay down and illustrate its fundamental principles, to gain some insight into its methods, to determine the nature and force of linguistic evidence, to see how this is elicited from the material containing it, to note its bearing on historical and ethnological study, and to review briefly the principal results hitherto obtained by its means The method followed will be the analytic, establishing principles from facts |