26 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Theoretical doubts as to the efficiency of the departmental system for the 

 prosecution of research seem destined to vanish in the face of experience 

 now rapidly accumulating. All departments are in fact proving so highly 

 productive that it will not be easy to keep pace with their expanding needs 

 and provide adequate means for the publication of their researches. Strict 

 economies must be enjoined upon them; and they must learn, wherever 

 possible, to increase efficiency by diminishing expenses rather than by en- 

 larging them. In the meantime it should be stated that these departments 

 have been confronted by the adverse economic condition of a continuous 

 rise in prices of commodities and in the cost of living, so that the estimated 

 budgets of two to five years ago now require an increase of lo to 15 per 

 cent to meet this condition alone. 



Along with the development of departmental investigations, many young 

 men of exceptional abilities now attached to the several staffs promise to 

 acquire training and experience which will fit them admirably for work 

 of instruction and research in academic institutions. Since the demand 

 from the latter for able men is increasing, it may be anticipated that in the 

 near future the Institution will be called upon to repay to educational estab- 

 lishments whatever debt has been incurred in drawing from them chiefly in 

 manning our departments. 



Referring to the full reports of the heads of departments, published in 

 the present volume, pages 53 to 225, for the more interesting and instructive 

 details, the following summary may serve to indicate some of the salient 

 features of current progress in departmental work. 



With headquarters at the Desert Botanical Laboratory, at Tucson, Ari- 

 zona, in the midst of a vast arid region, one of the results to be expected 



^ , from this department is a descriptive account of the 



Department of ... 1 1 1 • r 1 1 a 



Botanical characteristic forms and habitats of desert plants. A 



Research. preliminary volume devoted to this end was issued as 



publication No. 6 of the Institution in 1904. Since the latter volume is now 

 nearly exhausted, the issue during the year of a larger volume, publication 

 No. 99, by Director MacDougal, entitled Botanical Features of North Amer- 

 ican Deserts, is timely both for the needs of the department and for the 

 progress of botanical science. A more technical memoir, entitled Distribu- 

 tion and Movements of Desert Plants, by Professor V. M. Spalding, of the 

 departmental staff, has been recently completed for publication. 



Of the numerous promising investigations in progress under this depart- 

 ment, it may suffice to cite those of the influx of plants in the receding area 

 of Salton Sea, the general role of water evaporation in plant life, the physi- 

 ology of transpiration in plants, the histology of hybrids, and the effects 

 of altitude, insolation, and other climatic factors. To these should be added 

 the more remarkable experimental researches of Director MacDougal in the 



