such experiments, Huxley remarks: "No experimental | abolition was secured by statute in Pennsylvania in 1780, evidence that a liquid may be heated to n degrees, and in Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1784, in New York yet subsequently give rise to living organisms, is of the in 1799, and in New Jersey in 1804. As the States smallest value as proof that abiogenesis has taken north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi were adplace; and for two reasons: firstly, there is no proof mitted, the provisions of the ordinance of 1787, under that organisms of the kind in question are dead, ex- which their territorial organizations had been effected, cept their permanent incapacity to grow and reproduce made them free States; and in 1820 slavery was aboltheir kind; and secondly, since we know that condi- ished in the Louisiana purchase north of lat. 36° 30', tions may largely modify the power of resistance of excepting in Missouri. In 1857 the Supreme Court, in such organisms to heat, it is far more probable that the Dred Scott decision, denied the validity of this last such conditions existed in the experiment in question abolition, but its essential feature had been inserted in than that the organisms were generated afresh out of the constitution of the only State as yet formed in it, dead matter." Iowa. "Gradual abolition" had thus done all that it could do. It had extinguished slavery wherever the climate had always been against slavery, north of Mason and Dixon's line and the Ohio River; elsewhere it had hardly scratched the surface of the system. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 had increased the export of cotton from 189,316 pounds in 1791 to 63,944,459 pounds in 1807, had made slave-labor profitable in the cotton States and slave-breeding profitable in the border States, and had changed the whole temper of the South on this subject. In 1806, in Congress, Early of Georgia could say, "I will tell the truth: a large majority of people in the Southern States do not consider slavery even an evil. Let gentlemen go and travel in that quarter of the Union, and they will find this to be the fact.' In the following year the abolition societies became discouraged, made their national meetings triennial, and soon ceased to meet altogether. The slight remaining abolition sentiment took up the Colonization Society, founded in 1816, with the design, in the North, to assist in abolishing slavery by colonizing free blacks in Africa, and in the South, to rid the country of troublesome freedmen.

(E. C.) ABOLITIONISTS. The American Revolution found and left African slavery in the United States a political fact. On whatever basis the system rested, on common custom hardened into colonial law in the lapse of years, or on the king's will as expressed in his governors' vetoes of acts to interfere with the introduction of slaves, the Revolution made no attack upon it. It made some efforts, however, to check the slave-trade. The "Articles of Association" prepared by the Continental Congress of 1774 bound the subscribers not to purchase slaves imported after that time, and not to be concerned in the slave-trade; and Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a paragraph, afterwards stricken out, accusing the king of waging cruel war against human nature itself" by introducing African slavery into the colonies, and of prostituting his veto power to suppress every legislative attempt to restrain the slave-trade. An attempt to suppress the trade was made by Congress in opening the ports of the country, April 6, 1776; one of the resolutions read "that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen colonies." But the Congress lacked the power, as the States lacked the desire, to really suppress either slavery or the slave-trade. When the Federal Convention met in 1787 the representatives of Georgia and South Carolina came prepared to insist on a continuance of the slave-trade as a conditio sine qua non to a closer union. Their persistence obtained a compromise, Aug. 25, 1787, which became Section 9 of Article I. of the Constitution. By its terms the slave-trade was not to be forbidden before the year 1808, except that a tax of ten dollars a head might be imposed on such "importations or migrations;" and it seems to have been tacitly agreed that the fugitive-slave clause of Article IV. should also be inserted in the revised Constitution. The slave-trade was thus brought at once under the revenue power of Congress, and within twenty years under its commercial power also. As the appointed time drew near President Jefferson reminded Congress of its duty in the premises, and the act of March 2, 1807, finally abolished the slave-trade on and after Jan. 1 following. The coastwise slave-trade, from State to State, was regulated and allowed to continue. It gave rise to many international difficulties through the action of British authorities in freeing slaves found on American coasters forced into British colonial ports by stress of weather. It was not finally abolished until July 2, 1864, an act for that purpose having been passed as a part of the civil appropriation bill.

At first men of all parties, North and South, agreed in condemning African slavery as expensive, wicked, and a growing weakness to the States which continued to allow it. Indeed, the language of SouthernersWashington, Jefferson, Mason, and others-was far stronger than that of Northerners on these points; and it seems to have been honest, though South Carolina politicians alleged that Virginia, having supplied herself with slaves, desired to abolish the foreign slavetrade only in order to become a slave-breeding ground for other States. But everywhere the respect for vested property rights made the idea of gradual abolition the controlling principle for some forty years. The State constitution of Vermont (not yet admitted to the Union) in 1777, of Massachusetts in 1780, and of New Hampshire in 1783, abolished slavery; and gradual

VOL. I.-B

66

For the colonial history of slavery and attempts at its abolition see 6 Bancroft's United States, 413-415; Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave-Trade, 99; Hildreth's Despotism in America, 177-253; H. Sherman's Slavery in the United States; Moore's Slavery in Massachusetts; Bettle's Slavery in Pennsylvania; Goodell's Slavery and Anti-Slavery; 1 Journals of Congress, 24, 307 (1774-76).

dreth and Goodell, above cited; Livermore's Opinions of For the "gradual-abolition" period, 1780-1830, see Hilthe Founders of the Republic on Negroes; 1 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power; 1 Von Holst's United States (Lalor's translation), 302-408; the authorities cited in Von Holst's notes; Stockwell's History of Liberia; and the volumes of the African Repository, the organ of the Colonization Society.

Until 1829-30 the abolition idea was representative of a sentiment only, and the remarkable change which then took place in it was due mainly to William Lloyd Garrison, a Massachusetts printer engaged with Benjamin Lundy in printing a "gradual-abolition" newspaper at Baltimore. Garrison first raised the cry of "immediate" abolition, meaning thereby the use of every means at all times towards abolition without consulting slave-owners. He seems to have had from the first a clear perception of the consequences of his new departure. He returned to Boston, established The Liberator as his newspaper organ, Jan. 1, 1831, and the New England Anti-Slavery Society a year later, and began a fierce and successful attack upon the orthodox Colonization Society. In December, 1833, an abolition convention at Philadelphia formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the abolitionists, with the new and aggressive significance now attached to their name, became a class of national importance. The next five years were their period of storm and stress. Throughout the South the idea of "gradual" abolition disappeared in an instant; the new phase of the anti-slavery feeling was denounced as insulting to the South and dangerous to the continuance of the Union; rewards were offered for the capture of prominent abolitionists; and the slave laws were made more rigorous than they had ever been before. From this time the state of siege, which ceased only in 1865, became the rule in the South. In the North there was a general feeling of sympathy with Southern

ministration, 9-86; Harris's Political Conflict in America, 67– 83; Pollard's Lost Cause, 54-64; 2 Stephens's War Between the States, 27-102; 4 Calhoun's Works, 542-573 (his speech of March 4, 1850).

indignation, and the result was a long series of mob-versy; 4 Tucker's United States, 428-433; Buchanan's Adattacks on abolition meetings and violence in every form. Before 1840 these in reality had exhausted themselves, though they never ceased entirely until 1861. At first the political action of the abolitionists was confined to petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Beyond this Garrison and his radical followers did not desire to go, for they believed the Constitution itself to be a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," on account of the political power which slave-owners had obtained under it. They refused to vote, hold office, or recognize the Government as having any authority over them; they attacked the national church organizations as supporters of slavery; and in every political sense they were a law unto themselves. In 1839-40 the "political abolitionists," who considered the Constitution in no sense a pro-slavery instrument, and who wished to use and not defy it and the churches in the anti-slavery work, seceded and formed the "American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society." In political contests they took the name of the "Liberty party." In 1839 they nominated James G. Birney of New York and F. J. Lemoyne of Pennsylvania for President and Vice-President, but polled only 7059 popular votes, mainly in Western New York. In 1844, substituting Thomas Morris of Ohio for Lemoyne, they polled 62,300 votes, and these, being taken mostly from Clay's vote, gave Polk the electoral vote of New York by a plurality, made him President, and secured the annexation of Texas and the addition of nearly 400,000 square miles of slave soil to the United States. This startling result ended the independent action of the Liberty party in national politics.

Hitherto the anti-slavery feeling had been regarded as a plaything: it had now shown itself to be a possible political weapon, and skilful hands were ready to wield it. In the Northern Democratic party there was a strong anti-slavery element and a veteran political leader, Van Buren, and both had been defeated in the Democratic convention of 1844. Alike only in their common defeat, they joined forces in 1848 to avenge it, and the Liberty party subsided into the motley host. The whole took the name of the FREE-SOIL PARTY (see that title). Even after its defeat by the compromise of 1850, Free-Soilers, such as Sumner, Chase, and Hale, were sent to Congress by coalitions of Democrats and Free-Soilers, and these fell into the Republican party on its appearance in 1854-55. But throughout these mutations the abolitionists remained in, but not of, whatever party they joined. To them the essential object in view was not so much the exclusion of slavery from the Territories, or the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law, as the abolition of slavery throughout the United States. The only present means to this end was a constant assistance of fugitive slaves to escape to Canada through the "underground railroad," a series of stations in private houses in which the fugitives were fed, clothed, and provided with concealment and information. In the Kansas difficulties of 1855-58 the abolitionist feeling took the semi-warlike shape of arming intending immigrants; and in October, 1859, it went to the extremity of aiding John Brown in his attempted slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry.

The authorities for this period are still Wilson's and Goodell's works, above cited; 2 Von Holst's United States, 80-147, and 3: 563-597; and 1 Greeley's American Conflict. A very interesting work is May's Recollections of our AntiSlavery Conflict, from which Wilson and Greeley have drawn. See also Jay's Inquiry into the Character of the Colonization Society and Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery; Garrison's Speeches; Johnson's Life of William Lloyd Garrison; Frothingham's Life of Gerrit Smith; Lovejoy's Life of Lovejoy; History of Pennsylvania Hall; Tappan's Life of Tappan; Still's Underground Railroad; Redpath's Life of John Brown; Giddings's History of the Rebellion; 1 Draper's Civil War in America, 311-338; Helper's Impending Crisis in the South; Cairnes's Slave Power; and Cobb's Historical Sketch of Sla

very.

For the various shades of anti-abolition feeling see Lunt's Origin of the Late War; Fowler's Sectional Contro

In the Federal Convention, Aug. 21, 1787, Luther Martin of Maryland, in asking for a prohibition of the slave-trade, gave as a reason that "slaves weakened one part of the Union, which the other parts were bound to protect; the privilege of importing them was therefore unreasonable.' And in a passionate speech the next day on this infernal traffic" George Mason of Virginia spoke thus strongly: "The evil of having slaves was experienced during the late war. Had slaves been treated as they might have been by the enemy, they would have proved dangerous instruments in their hands; but their folly dealt by the slaves as it did by the Tories." He mentioned the dangerous insurrections of the slaves in Greece and Sicily, and the instructions given by Cromwell to the commissioners sent to Virginia, to arm the servants and slaves in case other means of obtaining its submission should fail. In an intended speech in February, 1836, and in another delivered April 14, 1842, John Quincy Adams had fully developed the power of the Federal Government, in a case of military necessity arising either under foreign invasion or domestic insurrection, to emancipate negro slaves. This inherent weakness of a slaveholding community in war was forgotten by both parties in 1861. Eleven slaveholding States seceded in defiance of all the possible evils of war; and in July, 1861, Congress almost unanimously resolved that the war was not prosecuted with any purpose of interfering with the "established institutions" of the seceding States, and that it ought to cease as soon as the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws and the perpetuity of the Union were secured. But it was inevitable that a continuance of the war should result in an attack on slavery, sooner or later, for no belligerent will willingly fight with one hand tied behind it. Little by little the process went on, through the successive stages of confiscating the property in slaves employed against the Government, forbidding the army to return fugitive slaves, abolishing slavery in the Territories and in the District of Columbia, and authorizing the employment of negro soldiers, up to the Emancipation Proclamation. Two subordinate generals, Fremont in Missouri and Hunter in South Carolina, had already issued proclamations abolishing slavery within their fields of command, but their action was disavowed by the President, whose special desire was for compensated abolition. In December, 1862, he proposed to Congress three constitutional amendments, to compensate States which should abolish slavery before the year 1900, and to colonize free negroes out of the country; but these were not considered. Gradual abolition, however, was made a part of the constitution of West Virginia in 1862 and Missouri in 1863, and immediate abolition in the constitution of Maryland in 1864.

But

President Lincoln's preliminary proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862, and his final proclamation of Jan 1, 1863, purported to abolish slavery in the seceding States, excepting the thirteen parishes of Louisiana and the seven counties of Virginia then within the Union lines. the difficulty, by reason of which the validity of the proclamation has been severely criticised, is that in the specified territory President Lincoln had no constitutional power as President, and no physical power as commander-in-chief, to free a single slave. The dif ficulty may be avoided, however, by considering the final proclamation as a mere rule of action for Federal commanders, and as taking effect in future as the Federal lines should advance; and this was probably the sense in which its author intended it. The advance of the Federal armies and the State action above referred to had practically abolished slavery everywhere except in Kentucky and Delaware when the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which had been proposed by Congress, April 8, 1864, in the Senate, and Jan. 31,

ABSENTEEISM is the living at a distance from one's estates. Public opinion and common feeling always have regarded the practice as pernicious to the estate and the country whose revenues are consumed at a distance. But J. R. McCulloch and other English economists perceived that this feeling is in conflict with the proposition of the economists, that the general welfare is best secured through each individual following the bent of his own inclination and doing as he will with what is his own.

The question is important chiefly in its bearings on the controversy on free trade. Mr. McCulloch, treating of Ireland, maintains that the resident landlord exchanges his income for Irish commodities or their equivalent, bringing them into his house in Ireland and consuming them there: the absentee landlord also, through the merchants who furnish him with bills, exchanges his income for Irish commodities, which, or their equivalents, he brings into or consumes in his house in London or Paris. "It is never, in short, by sending abroad revenue, but by sending abroad capital, that nations are impoverished. Should absentees return, there would be an increased demand for commodities or labor both to the extent of three or four millions sterling; but that would be balanced by an equal diminution in the foreign market.”

In discussing these statements let us assume, for convenience, that the rents of estates owned in Ireland by absentee landlords are four millions sterling, and the value of the crops on those estates twenty millions sterling. This would leave to the tenants sixteen millions sterling to reward them for their labor and to pay the interest on the capital they have invested in farming. If the merchants who furnish the landlords with bills expend the four millions in the purchase and export of raw produce, the effect will be the same as though one-fifth of the crop had been exported, and, so far as the industry of Ireland is concerned, this fifth might as well have been burned. No advantage is derived from it by either Irish capital or Irish labor. Both must confine their gains to the remaining four-fifths. The country from the start will be the poorer by the four millions sterling it might have used in home consumption. It will not become poorer and poorer so long as the rents are not raised; it will be poor at a fixed rate.

If the landlords and their families, while living in idleness, consumed just this share of the Irish harvests as food, it might be a matter of indifference whether they did this at home or abroad. But, in fact, their fourth is converted into money which pays for the services of a vast variety of persons and in buying a great number of material objects other than food. The landlords, therefore, in using these articles and employ ing these services exclude the rest of the community from the enjoyment of less than one-fourth the value of their rents-from no more, indeed, than the value of the raw material which enters into the commodities they consume. The rest-three-fourths or morepays for services in the production of elaborated commodities or direct services.

Resident landlords, consuming their rents in Ireland, procure the working up of their four millions sterling of raw commodities into finished products of far greater value, say eight millions sterling. Of this sum, seven millions sterling or more go to the support of other classes. But with landlords non-resident the whole amount of raw material paid in rent is lost to the country by its exportation in that condition. Were the export one of finished commodities, one-half of their value represents payment for labor and capital expended in their elaboration, and this half will be expended on other products, half of it going for the payment of labor and capital, and so on. The export of finished products means the creation of an effective demand for other products within the country, and the finer the export the greater the demand. That of raw products results in no such advantage.

When it is said that nations grow poorer only by the export of capital, and not by sending abroad their revenue, the true nature of national wealth is ignoredthat wealth is not measured by the exchangeable value of a nation's property, but by its power to command the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, and is measured by the power to consume. That power stands in close and immediate relation to the interior development of productive industry and the growth of the power of association among the people. That the indirect effects of a landlord's residence are beneficial is conceded even by those who defend the economic thesis we have been disproving. It is admitted that his higher standard of comfort, his superior intelligence, his example of improvement, his public spirit, may be highly useful; and he has social opportunities of exciting competition in the best direction. The existence of a landlord class is beneficial to society partly for these reasons; and it is not to be wondered that the practice of non-residence has created a demand for the abolition of the class and the creation of a peasant proprietorship.

In this discussion we have assumed that residence implies the consumption of native products elaborated by native labor. If the four millions sterling are spent in British or French products imported into Ireland, the country derives no more benefit from them than if its landlords had chosen to live in London or Paris. Here it is that defence of absenteeism coincides with the theory of free trade. In Ireland, to recur to our example, this is unhappily true. The country is supplied with manufactures from every corner of Europe, especially from England, but has almost none of its own. The benefits which its people would derive from the superior tastes and the higher ideas of comfort among its wealthier classes are not attained. Popular instinct stamps the landlords as a useless excrescence, and proposes to rid the country of those from whose superior culture it might derive great indirect benefits. (G. B. D.).

ABSOLON, JOHN, an English artist, was born in 1815. He began as a miniature-painter, but about 1836, after having studied for some time at Paris, he devoted himself chiefly to water-color painting. He, has been an active member of the New Water-Color Society and of the Institute of Painters in Water-Colors, and has frequently exhibited at the British Institution and at the Royal Academy. Absolon's works are excellent representatives of that tendency in English art which Taine condemns, or at least disparages, with the word "literary.' Nearly all his best pictures are representations of incidents described by popular authors, or are of that anecdotal character which appeals to the spectator's knowledge of the commonplaces of life rather than to his appreciation of its poetical moments. His works are usually pleasing in matter and in manner, and they are frank and honest statements of their subjects, which suggest nothing more than they tell in a language that all can readily understand. Among his best-known pictures may be mentioned The Vicar of Wakefield, Joan of Arc, The Field of the Cloth of Gold, The First Night in a Convent, Captain Macheath Betraying his Mistress, Threading the Needle, The Courtship of Miles Standish, The Courtship of Gainsborough, Home, The Missal, Facing the Storm, Ready for the Ball, Rescue of St. Arthur and Miss Wardour, and After a Walk to Islington. (W. J. C., JR.).

Edin. ed.).

ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE OF AMERICA. In See Vol. I. treating of American scientific institutions a p. 67 Am. brief allusion to the rise and progress of ed. (p. 68 science in the Western hemisphere may not be undesirable. American science is chiefly confined to the United States, though Canada has of late years shown some commendable activity in this direction. There are museums and academies of science in the principal cities of Spanish America, as Mexico, Buenos Ayres, etc., and printed results of their observations are issued by the University of Chili,

the Argentine Scientific Society of Buenos Ayres, the Mexican Society of Natural History, etc., yet these can scarcely claim to rival the scientific productions of the United States' institutions. These latter have been, until recently, confined to the older seaboard cities, but culture in this direction is now spreading through all the States, and each of the large cities of the West has its young but ardent and rapidly growing academy of science. In many of the smaller towns minor associations exist, and the foundations for a broad and liberal culture in the knowledge of the facts and laws of Nature have been deeply laid.

For many years after the settlement of America the conditions requisite for scientific research were absent. Americans are yet, to a considerable degree, pioneers in a new world, and have not fully achieved that physical conquest of the country which occupied the time and exhausted the mental energy of the earlier inhabitants. Even when growing wealth and increasing leisure in the older cities yielded some of the necessary conditions for the pursuit of a knowledge of Nature, the other conditions were wanting. There was no incitement to scientific study, and there were no schools for scientific education, no collections of scientific books and materials, and no demand for scientific information. Thus, while the first important steps in the progress of modern science in Europe were being taken, the minds and the time of the citizens of America were occupied in the development of a new continent. The earlier American scientists, such as Dr. Franklin and Count Rumford, probably gained their first thirst for scientific research in Europe. Franklin spent several of his youthful years in London, and Rumford was American only in birth; his scientific labors were wholly European.

reputation rests particularly upon the theories which they promulgated, vast edifices of thought into whose walls fell thousands of facts, as harmoniously combined as are the building-stones in a grand temple. America has as yet produced few deductive scientists, and none whose work fairly compares with that of those above named. The theories of Franklin were based on an imperfect series of facts, and since his day American scientists have devoted themselves almost exclusively to the observation of facts and the collection of materials. Only very recently has there been shown any active disposition to collate these facts and to deduce thence Nature's underlying principles. Some important theoretical views have been advanced, and there are growing indications that American science is on the verge of entering its second stage, and of drawing from the material which it has gathered in a century of active research important additions to man's knowledge of the laws and principles of Nature. In addition to the scientific treasures possessed by the institutions specially devoted to research, the universities of the country are also largely provided with scientific material, and in their classes a new generation of American scientists is being formed, destined, perhaps, to carry forward the science of the Western World to a high level of accomplishment, and to pursue that ardent study of the laws of Nature which is the converging-point of all study of its phenomena.

The oldest scientific institution in America owes its origin to the conception and efforts of Dr. Franklin. It was first advocated by him in a paper dated May 14, 1743, and entitled A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America. In the succeeding year (1744) he succeeded in organizing an association called the American Philosophical SoThe discoveries, the theories, and the active organ-ciety, with Thomas Hopkinson as president, Benjamin izing spirit of Benjamin Franklin were the first import- Franklin as secretary, and among its members John ant incitements to American research. The reflection Bartram the botanist. Thomas Godfrey the mathemaof his European fame back to his native shores roused tician, and other well-known persons. Franklin's time a spirit of emulation, which was fostered and encour- being otherwise engaged, this society languished, and aged in the institutions which he founded. Some of discontinued its meetings after a few years. It was these institutions yet exist as the oldest and most active revived in 1767, and reorganized in 1768 as the Amerof American organizations for the pursuit of knowledge. ican Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting UseTo him, therefore, may be fairly given the title of the ful Knowledge. Meanwhile, another society was formed "Father of American Science.' in Philadelphia, called the Junto, or Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge. Its date of organization is not known, but its preserved records begin Sept. 22, 1758. Possibly, it was a revival of the youthful society of the Junto, established by Franklin in 1727. On Jan. 2, 1769, these two societies united under the title of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Of this society Dr. Franklin became the first president, and was annually re-elected until his death. The American Philosophical Society is still in active existence, and is the oldest of American scientific institutions. Its original object was the promotion of knowledge in general, and such branches in particular as might be of service to the British colonies. The title of this society does not well indicate its present character, since it is almost exclusively scientific in its labors. These are included in a valuable series of published Transactions dating from 1789, and of Proceedings from 1838 to the present. The society possesses a fine library of about 30,000 volumes.

It is not our purpose here to attempt any review of the progress of science in America, and it will suffice to say that the desire for scientific knowledge, once awakened, incited many able men to the study of Nature, particularly as displayed in the Western hemisphere. This desire for knowledge has widened and deepened, and has produced an activity of research into scientific facts and collections of scientific material rapidly approaching, if not equalling, those of the older institutions of Europe.

It must be admitted, however, that American science has as yet been principally confined to its primary field, the collection of facts and of material for study. This, though an absolutely necessary first step in all useful scientific progress, is by no means its final stage. Science has its two separate fields, induction and deduction. In the growth of science deduction preceded induction-a vitally false method, since great edifices of ideas were based upon fancies, and were destined to sink into ruin at the first touch of facts. The true scientific method is the discovery of the facts of Nature, followed by the collocation of these facts, and the deduction thence of natural principles. This is the mode of investigation now pursued, it being evident that a knowledge of facts, though useful in itself, has its highest utility as an aid to the discovery of principles. American science is as yet almost wholly inductive. European science has long been largely deductive. The fame of the greatest European scientists is based much more largely upon their discovery of principles than upon their observation of facts. Newton, Laplace, Young, Humboldt, Cuvier, Darwin, Spencer, and many others who might be named, were active observers, but their

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia is, in several respects, the most important of American scientific institutions. It was organized and its constitution adopted in 1812, and incorporated in 1817. During its seventy years of active labor it has gathered an exceptionally fine museum and a highly valuable library which contains about 30,000 volumes. The library is more complete in respect to natural history than any other in the United States, and is particularly rich in valuable illustrated works. The museum calls for some special reference, its collections in some departments being unsurpassed, not only in this country, but in the world. In the department of conchology