REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 



OF THE 



CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON 



In conformity with Article IV, section 2, of the By-Laws of 

 the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the President has the 

 honor to submit the following report on the work of the Institu- 

 tion for the fiscal year ending October 31, 1916, along with 

 recommendations of appropriations for the ensuing year and 

 with sundry suggestions concerning other matters of general or 

 special interest. 



This report is the fifteenth annual administrative report of the 

 Institution and is presented under the following principal heads : 



1. Historical notes. 



2. Researches of the Institution. 



3. Financial records. 



4. Publications and bibhography. 



5. Proposals for budget for 1917. 



HISTORICAL NOTES. 



It is the principal business of a research organization to 

 observe and to investigate phenomena; but of the vast aggregate 



of phenomena presented to us by the universe 

 Necrology. only a few have been so clearly described that 



they may be said to be provisionally understood. 

 In this vast aggregate there are, indeed, many which have been 

 long observed but little investigated. Some of these, hke bodily 

 disease and social unwisdom, are plainly amenable to meliora- 

 tion; but there are others, quite as famiUar, which have long 

 baffled investigation and which seem destined to remain long 

 in the elementary stage of observation alone. Amongst these 

 latter the phenomenon of death is the most conspicuous and the 

 least reconcilable. It prevails with a uniformity and a deter- 

 minateness characteristic of the grander phenomena of the solar 

 system and its average toll per unit time may be anticipated 

 with a certainty little surpassed by the reckoning of the pro- 



