14 EEPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



bodies of tlie Indians. This i)aper was described in the last report. It 

 may, however, be here mentioned that it is of special interest in connec- 

 tion with the large number of ethnological specimens received during 

 the past year from the northwest coast. 



Another work published during the year is the third of the Toner- 

 lecture series. It is by Dr. J. M. DaCosta, of Philadelphia, on the strain 

 and over-action of the heart, and forms 32 octavo pages, illustrated by two 

 woodcuts. These lectures, as has been stated in previous reports, have 

 been instituted at Washington by Dr. Joseph M. Toner, and are confined 

 to such memoirs or essays relative to medical science as contain some 

 new truth fully established by experiment or observation. It is proper 

 to remark that of this course of lectures only two have been published, 

 the first and the third, the author having not yet furnished the manu- 

 script of the second. To defray, in part at least, the cost of printing 

 these lectures, it has been thought advisable to charge for them 25 cents 

 a copy to individuals who have no special claim on the Institution by 

 having contributed meteorological observations or additions to the col- 

 lections. 



Another work printed during the year is a list of the publications of 

 the Institution to July, 1874, exhibiting 297 distinct articles, arranged 

 first numerically, and secondly in regard to the subjects as given in the 

 titles. It forms an octavo of 26 pages. An edition of 2,500 copies of 

 this work was furnished to the "Publishers' Trade List Annual" for 

 1874, (New York, October, 1874,) and through this medium the list of 

 publications of the Institution will become known to all booksellers and 

 librarians in the United States. 



An edition of 250 copies of tables selected from the volume of Physi- 

 cal and Meteorological Tables, prepared and published some years since 

 at the expense of the Institution, has been printed for the use of the 

 Argentine Meteorological Observatory at Cordoba, under the direction 

 of our distinguished countryman, Dr. B. A. Gould. 



FuhUcations in the press: 1. The Antiquities of Tennessee, by Dr. 

 Joseph Jones, of which an account was given in the last report. Of 

 this the wood-cuts have been jirepared, and it is expected that the 

 printing will be finished in the course of the present year. 



2. A Memoir on the Harmonies of the Solar System, by Prof. Stephen 

 Alexander, of the College of New Jersey. 



In this communication the author divides his subject into three sections. 

 Section I begins with the statement that Kepler's third law is ordinarily 

 expressed by saying that the squares of the periodic times of the sev- 

 eral planets of the solar system are to one another, respectively, as the 

 cubes of their distances from the sun ; but from this we do not learn 

 that there are any laws determining the ratios of the distances them- 

 selves, and it is one of the main objects of the pres'ent discussion to 

 show that such laws exist, and precisely what they are; generality and 

 precision being characteristics of every law of nature. 



