prevention of disease and its cure. In following out this sphere of work the Institution issued a circular, under date of February 3, 1908, offering a prize of $1,500 for the best treatise on "The relation of atmospheric air to tuberculosis" that should be presented at the international congress on tuberculosis, which was held in Washington from September 21 to October 12, 1908. This prize aroused widespread interest among the students on this subject and resulted in the receipt by the Institution of 81 papers submitted in competition. All of these have been referred to the committee on awards, whose report is expected in a short time.

Grants from the Hodgkins fund, although not numerous during the past year, have been the means of furthering important investigations which are still in progress.

RESEARCHES ON ATMOSPHERIC AIR.

A Hodgkins grant was approved in October, 1908, for the erection of a small stone shelter on the summit. of Mount Whitney, California, for the use of investigators during the prosecution of researches on atmospheric air, or on subjects closely related thereto.

The pioneer trip to the summit of Mount Whitney in the summer of 1881 by the late Secretary Langley, at that time director of the Allegheny Observatory, will be recalled in this connection as well as his earnestly expressed conviction that in no country is there a finer site for meteorological and atmospheric observations than the United States possesses in Mount Whitney and its neighboring peaks.

As emphasized in the report of the Langley expedition, a permanent shelter on the peak is an absolute necessity for the prosecution of continued observations there, and the erection of such a shelter has now been made possible by the extension of railway facilities toward the base of the mountain and the improvement of the trails to the summit.

Mr. C. G. Abbot, who succeeded Secretary Langley as director of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, and to whose immediate suggestion and earnest personal efforts the preparation for and the establishment of this important post on Mount Whitney are largely due, began his observations there in the summer of 1909, and obtained important data in the determination of the solar constant.

The cooperation of Prof. W. W. Campbell, the director of Lick Observatory, University of California, at Mount Hamilton, has been most helpful during the erection of the shelter, and the interest of many of the citizens of Lone Pine, near the border line of the government reservation, has been heartily and patriotically expressed. It is easily seen that the local feeling in favor of the station will make its occupation more readily and comfortably available by members

of the research parties who will from time to time desire to work there.

The class of researches to be prosecuted at this exceptionably favorable station are not only of great scientific interest, but are expected also to prove of value in determining questions having a direct, practical influence on the preservation and progress of human life on our globe.

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD PYRHELIOMETERS.

A limited grant from the Hodgkins fund was approved in February, 1909, for the construction of several silver disk pyrheliometers. These instruments are to be placed in charge of scientific investigators in widely separated localities for the purpose of establishing an international scale for the comparison of observations on solar radiation. The varying results published by observers have made the need of international cooperation in this connection apparent, and the matter has received considerable attention at conferences of the Solar Union.

These simple and comparatively inexpensive instruments are to be constructed after a design by Mr. Abbot. Similar pyrheliometers have been employed in the researches of the Astrophysical Observatory for several years and have proved entirely satisfactory.

PUBLICATIONS UNDER THE HODGKINS FUND.

Bibliography of aeronautical literature.—An exhaustive bibliography of aeronautical literature, compiled by Mr. Paul Brockett, assistant librarian of the Smithsonian Institution, has been completed to July 1, 1909, and is now in course of publication. This work contains references to about 13,500 published articles and is designed to render available the voluminous literature in all languages, on aviation.

Mechanics of the earth's atmosphere.-In 1891 the Institution published a volume of translations of important foreign memoirs on the "Mechanics of the earth's atmosphere," which was prepared by Prof. Cleveland Abbe. There was put to press during the past year a second collection of papers on this subject.

SMITHSONIAN TABLE AT NAPLES ZOOLOGICAL STATION.

The occupants of the Smithsonian table at Naples during the past year were Dr. C. A. Kofoid, of the University of California and the San Diego Marine Biological Station, and Dr. F. M. Guyer, of the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Kofoid is studying the question of sexual reproduction among Dinoflagellata and carrying on experimental work on autotomy in Ceratium, with reference to temperature and vertical distribution in the sea. Their investigations covered a period of seven months.

The present lease of the table expires December 31, 1909, but its renewal for another term of three years has been decided on, so that applications for the seat may now be submitted at any time.

As in former years, the cooperation of the members of the advisory committee has been of great value in the examination of applications for the seat, and is always thoroughly appreciated.

PUBLICATIONS.

The publication work of the Smithsonian Institution has from its beginning been one of its most important functions. It has been the principal medium for the " diffusion of knowledge" throughout the world. The Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, and the Smithsonian Annual Reports are publications widely known, and the demand for copies of these works has constantly been much in excess of the possible supply. The editions of the "Contributions" and the "Collections " are necessarily restricted by the limited income of the Institution, and their distribution is almost entirely to public institutions rather than to individuals. The Annual Reports, however, are public documents, issued at the expense of a congressional appropriation. Although this permits of editions of several thousand copies, yet the entire number is each year exhausted soon after the date of publication.

Besides the publications of the Institution proper there are issued under its direction the Bulletins and Annual Reports of the United States National Museum and of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and the Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory. The details relating to these various series during the year will be found in the appendix to this report.

In the series of "Contributions" no new volume was published, although there was issued a new edition of Professor Langley's memoir on "The internal work of the wind," originally printed in 1893. To this new edition was added, as an appendix, a translation of the "Solution of a special case of the general problem," by Réné de Saussure, which appeared in 1893 in Revue de l'Aéronautique Théorique et Appliqué, Paris, in connection with a French reproduction of the above memoir by Professor Langley.

The quarterly issue of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections has now reached its fifth volume. Twenty papers were published in this series during the year. One of these papers, "Some recent contributions to our knowledge of the sun," was a lecture delivered at Washington April 22, 1908, under the auspices of the Hamilton fund of the Smithsonian Institution. Another paper, by Dr. Cyrus Adler, tells of the relation of Richard Rush to the Smithsonian Institution. Mr. Rush was agent of the United States to secure the bequest of

James Smithson. He successfully completed the legal steps necessary to establish the claim of the United States in the English courts, and in August, 1838, arrived in New York with half a million dollars in gold sovereigns which were formally transferred to the Treasurer of the United States. Mr. Rush later rendered important service in the organization of the Institution and was one of its first Regents, serving on the Board from 1846 until his death in 1859.

The continued demand for the Smithsonian Physical Tables, prepared by the late Prof. Thomas Gray, necessitated the reprinting of a fourth edition from the stereotype plates. A thorough revision of these Tables is in preparation to bring the work within the range of the important advance made in the science of physics during the last decade.

The volume of "Smithsonian Mathematical Tables: Hyperbolic Functions," prepared by Dr. George F. Becker and Mr. C. E. Van Orstrand, which was in press at the close of the last fiscal year, has been completed as a "special publication."

Three papers descriptive of my researches in Cambrian Geology and Paleontology have been added to those mentioned in my last report. These are: No. 3, Cambrian Brachiopoda: Description of New Genera and Species; No. 4, Classification and Terminology of the Cambrian Brachiopoda; and No. 5, Cambrian Sections of the Cordilleran Area. The last-named paper is accompanied by a number of illustrations of various parts of the Rocky Mountains showing the Cambrian Cordilleran sections which had been examined to a total thickness of more than 12,000 feet.

Among the works in press at the close of the year was a paper on "Landmarks of Botanical History," by Dr. Edward L. Greene, and a work on the "Mechanics of the Earth's Atmosphere," comprising a selection of important French and German papers translated and edited by Prof. Cleveland Abbe.

There was practically completed, ready for press, at the close of the year a Bibliography of Aeronautics containing references to about 13,500 books and papers on that subject, dating from the earliest days of printing down to the publications of the present year.

The greater part of the Annual Report for 1908 was in type at the close of the year, but press work could not be completed. The volume contains 27 papers showing progress made in astronomy, physics, biology, geology, and other branches of knowledge.

To meet the demand for copies of papers by Secretary Langley on aerial navigation, there was reprinted a special edition, under one cover, of four articles that had appeared in the Smithsonian Reports from 1897 to 1904, as follows: "Story of experiments in mechanical flight" (1897); "The Langley aerodrome" (1900); "The greatest flying creature" (1901); and "Experiments with the Langley aero

drome (1904). The introduction to this reprint, written by Assistant Secretary Adler, reads as follows:

The international fame of Samuel Pierpont Langley rests primarily upon his epoch-making researches in solar physics, but during the last ten years of his life his name was best known to the world at large by his experiments in mechanical flight.

Mr. Langley was the first to produce a machine heavier than air which, supported and propelled by its own engine and possessing no extraneous lifting or sustaining power, actually made an independent flight for a considerable distance, this being accomplished for the first time on May 6, 1896. He afterwards constructed other models driven by both steam and gasoline engines, which made frequent successful flights, and was thus the first to demonstrate by actual experiment the possibility of mechanical flight.

In addition to building various models and machines, most of which are now on exhibition in the United States National Museum, Mr. Langley recorded his studies and experiments in two technical works-" Experiments in Aerodynamics," published originally by the Smithsonian Institution in 1891, and "The Internal Work of the Wind," the original edition of which was issued by the Institution in 1893. The copious and painstaking notes made by Mr. Langley in connection with his latest experiments in mechanical flight are now in course of preparation for publication and will be issued by the Institution on completion, thus forming the third volume of this more technical series. Mr. Langley also wrote a few occasional popular papers relating to this same class of experiments, which were published in the Smithsonian reports and elsewhere, the editions of which are now quite exhausted. In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for information on a subject which is now claiming universal attention, and in which Mr. Langley was the pioneer, some of these less technical articles are here brought together and reprinted under a single cover. The publications of the National Museum during the year included a large number of papers in the Proceedings, and several Bulletins, the general contents of which are enumerated in the appendix.

The Bureau of American Ethnology published its Twenty-sixth Annual Report and a number of Bulletins. One of the Bulletins, No. 42, by Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, gives the results of his study of tuberculosis among certain Indian tribes.

The Annual Reports of the American Historical Association and of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution were received from those organizations and were communicated to Congress in accordance with their national charters.

The allotments to the Institution and its branches, under the head. of public printing and binding during the past fiscal year, aggregating $72,700, were, as far as practicable, expended prior to June 30. The allotments for the year ending June 30, 1910, are as follows: For the Smithsonian Institution for printing and binding annual reports of the Board of Regents, with general appendixes__. For the annual reports of the National Museum, with general appendixes, and for printing labels and blanks for the Bulletins and Proceedings of the National Museum, the editions of which shall not exceed 4,000 copies, and binding, in half turkey or material not more expensive, scientific books and pamphlets presented to and acquired by the National Museum library-

$10,000

34, 000