20 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Professor Osgood was born at Canton, Maine, April 9, 1855. 

 He was a graduate of Amherst College, and pursued graduate 

 studies in turn at Yale, Berlin, and Columbia universities, 

 attaining the doctorate at the last of these in 1889, while in the 

 meantime pursuing a sustaining vocation as teacher in the public 

 schools of Brooklyn. Early in his professorial career he set for 

 himself the arduous task of a determinative study of the political 

 genesis of the American RepubUc. To this he devoted himself 

 with unflagging industry and zeal to the end of his life, and his 

 achievements have won for him a position of eminence in this 

 field of inquiry and exposition. His history of ''The American 

 Colonies in the Seventeenth Century," in three volumes, published 

 in 1904 to 1907, is the standard work for the earlier part of the 

 period in question; and this he had planned to supplement by a 

 corresponding history of the eighteenth century brought down 

 to the beginning of the American Revolution. Happily for his 

 contemporaries and for his successors, the manuscripts for this 

 extended work, which is expected to comprise four additional 

 volumes, were nearly finished at the time of his death, and 

 arrangements have already been made with his heirs to complete 

 for publication at an early date this fitting memorial to a life 

 dedicated with rare fidelity and singleness of purpose to the 

 higher and more enduring objects of historical research. 



RESEARCHES OF THE YEAR. 



As indicated in a preceding section, the normal activities of the 

 Institution have undergone profound changes in many respects 

 since April 1917, and these changes have followed closely the 

 rapid development of our national participation in the portent- 

 ous combat. About two-thirds of the members of the investi- 

 gatory staffs, including Departments of Research and Research 

 Associates, have responded to calls for governmental work, while 

 nearly all of them have been deflected more or less from their 

 accustomed occupations. The demands on the Institution for 

 expert knowledge, technical skill, and unusual services, requiring 

 in many cases special investigations and much collaboration, 

 have received first attention. The variety and extent of these 



