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Rh Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington City, D. C., Dr. E. L. Youmans of New York, and General Hector Tyndale, of Philadelphia, to act as a Board of Trustees to take charge of the above sum, to carefully invest it in permanent securities; and I further direct that the said Board shall, for the present, appropriate the interest of the fund in supporting, or in assisting to support, at such European universities as they may consider most desirable, two (2) American pupils who may evince decided talents in physics, and who may express a determination to devote their lives to this work. My desire would be that each pupil should spend four years at a German university, three of those years to be devoted to the acquisition of knowledge, and the fourth to original investigation.

If, however, in the progress of science in the United States, it should at any time appear to the said Board that the end herein proposed would be better subserved by granting aid to students, or for some special researches in this country, the Board is authorized to make appropriations from the income of the fund for such purposes.

I further direct that vacancies which may occur in said Board of Trustees, by death or otherwise, shall be filled by the President of the National Academy of Sciences.

If in the course of any year the whole amount of the interest which accrues from the fund be not expended in the manner before mentioned, the surplus may be added to the principal, or may be expended in addition to the annual interest of another year,

If at any time any organization shall be established, and money provided by other persons for the promotion of such original research as I have in view, I authorize the said Board of Trustees to exercise their discretion as to coöperating in such work from the income of this fund.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 7th of February, 1873, in the city of New York.



IR GEORGE BIDDELL AIRY, the Astronomer Royal, was born on the 27th of June, 1801, at Alnwick, in Northumberland. His education was first cared for at two private academies, now at Hereford, now at Colchester. From the Colchester Grammar-School, when eighteen years of age, he went, in 1819, to Trinity College, Cambridge.