member from America, and was elected in 1696. He contributed one article to the Transactions, as listed in volume IV above. William Penn and Benjamin Franklin were members, as were a number of the colonial governors. Jefferson was never a member of the Royal Society but was fully acquainted with its work. In his plan for establishing uniformity in the coinage, weights and measures of the United States communicated to the House of Representatives, July 13, 1790 (written July 4, 1790), he referred to the work of the Royal Society in connection with measures of length: “ . . . on this branch of their subject the committee of 1757. 1758. says that the Standard measures of length at the Receipt of the Exchequer are a yard, supposed to be of the time of H. 7. and a yard & ell supposed to have been made about the year 1601. that they are brass rods, very coarsely made, their divisions not exact, & the rods bent: & that in the year 1742, some members of the Royal society had been at great pains in taking an exact measure of these standards by very curious instruments, prepared by the ingenious m ( ^~ r) Graham; that the Royal society had had a brass rod made pursuant to their experiments, which was made so accurately, & by persons so skilful & exact, that it was thought not easy to obtain a more exact one; & the Committee in fact found it to agree with the standards at the Exchequer as near as it was possible . . . ”

On November 10, 1811, in a letter to Robert Patterson, the director of the mint, concerning the interest of the American Philosophical Society in a fixed standard of measures, Jefferson again mentioned the Royal Society: “ . . . Peculiar circumstances however would require letters of a more special character to the Institute of France, and the Royal society of England . . .

" With England, our explanations will be much more delicate. they are the older country, the mother country, more advanced in the arts and sciences* possessing more wealth and leisure for their improvement, and animated by a pride more than laudable*. it is their measures too which we undertake to ascertain and communicate to themselves. the subject should therefore be opened to them with infinite tenderness and respect, and in some way which might give them due place in it’s agency . . .

" As this is really a work of common & equal interest to England and the US. perhaps it would be still more respectful to make our proposition to her Royal society in the outset, and to agree with them on a partition of the work. in this case any commencement of actual experiments, on our part should be provisional only, and preparatory to the ultimate results . . .

" *we are all occupied in industrious pursuits. they abound with persons living on the industry of their fathers, or on the earnings of their fellow citizens, given away by their rulers in sinecures and pensions. some of these, desirous of laudable distinction, devote their time and means to the pursuits of science, and become profitable members of society by an industry of a higher order. ”

The first Abridgment of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was published in 1700, and was intended for the use of the public, in England and in the colonies, for whom it was a matter of considerable difficulty to acquire the regular Transactions.

The copy sold to Congress is marked missing in the working copy of the Library of Congress 1815 catalogue.