18 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



evidently essential to further advances in the problems of plant and 

 animal evolution. The more adequate provision for this laboratory 

 adjunct furnished by the new departmental buildings, already re- 

 ferred to, will make it practicable to utihze still more advantageously 

 the highly developed qualitative and quantitative methods and data 

 of the older science of chemistry. 



Substantial progress toward completion of the several contribu- 

 tions from the twelve divisions of this department to their projected 



Department of ^^^^^ ^^^ ^ social and econouiic history of the United 



Economics and States is reported by Professor Henry W. Farnam, 

 ocioogy. Chairman of the department. It is estimated by 

 him that six of the divisions will be able to present final reports 

 within the next fiscal year. These are the divisions of Population 

 and Immigration, in charge of Professor Willcox; Mining, in charge of 

 Mr. Parker; Transportation, in charge of Professor Meyer; Domes- 

 tic and Foreign Commerce, in charge of Professor Johnson; Labor 

 Movement, in charge of Professor Conmions; and Social Legislation, 

 in charge of the Chairman. Delays due to the requirements of their 

 primary occupations, to ill health or misfortune in the case of some 

 collaborators, and to demands of public service in other cases, have 

 prevented the remaining divisions from bringing their work to a 

 similarly forward state. 



The Chairman again calls attention in his report to the desirability 

 of reorganizing this department and placing it on a basis similar to 

 that of all other departments of research of the Institution. As to the 

 appropriateness of this recommendation, there now appears to be no 

 dissent, either within or outside the department. It is hoped, there- 

 fore, that such a reorganization may be consunamated as soon as the 

 work now in hand may be completed in accord with the original 

 plan, if it should not appear advantageous to make the obviously 

 desirable change at an earlier date. There is no doubt that the field 

 of opportunity for effective pioneer work by such a department is in 

 great need of present-day cultivation and that it extends indefinitely 

 into the future. 



The preliminary stages in the development of this hitherto unique 

 establishment may now be said to have passed, since laboratories 

 The Geophysical similarly equipped and for like purposes are now 

 Laboratory. being sct up uudcr Other auspices. That the merits 

 of the methods, the apparatus, and the earlier published researches 

 of the Geophysical Laboratory should have been thus early recog- 

 nized is at once a source of gratification to the Institution and an 



