8 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



his journey, which will be published in the Miscellaneous Collections 

 of the Institution, while a brief popular abstract of Ins paper is now 

 in print and will form a part of the Appendix to the Annual Report of 

 the Regents for the year ending- June 30, 1892, soon to be issued. 



The principal other explorations of the Institution have been made 

 through the Bureau of Ethnology, to the report of whose Director the 

 reader is referred. 



PUBLICATIONS. 



Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. — The quarto series of publi- 

 cations under this title, inaugurated by the Institution in 1848, has 

 always been regarded as the most important of its issues — not merely by 

 priority in date, but as including only memoirs of extended original 

 investigations and researches, advancing what are believed to be new 

 truths, and constituting therefore positive additions to human knowl- 

 edge. 



The hope of its originator — the first Secretary — to be able to send 

 forth a quarto volume annually (after the practice of the Royal Society 

 of London), has not been realized; partly from the insufficiency of 

 material presented judged worthy of the position, partly from the cost. 



Volume xxx vm of the ''Contributions to Knowledge" has been 

 issued during the year, consisting entirely of a memoir entitled "Life 

 Histories of North American Birds, with special reference to their 

 breeding habits aud eggs," by Capt. Charles E. Bendire (U. S. Army, 

 retired), honorary curator of the oological collections in the IT. S. 

 National Museum. This somewhat elaborate work is illustrated with 

 well-executed chromo-lithographic plates of birds 1 eggs, representing 

 eight families and over 100 different species. It has been received with 

 exceptional favor by European as well as by American men of science. 



Another memoir published during the year, which, though brief, 

 is regarded as an important scientific "contribution," is a discussion, by 

 Prof. A. A. Michelson, of "the application of interference methods to 

 spectroscopic measurements," with a view to an increased precision in 

 measuring specific wave-lengths of light, which may ultimately be em- 

 ployed as fixed standards of comparison for units.of linear metrology. 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. — Of this series two volumes 

 have been issued during the year, Volumes xxxiv and xxxvi, the 

 former comprising a collection of ten articles previously published 

 separately. 



The latter consists of a new bibliography of chemistry for the past 

 four hundred years, a work of remarkable research by Dr. Henry Car- 

 rington Bolton, extending to more than 1,200 octavo pages. 



Volume xxxv of this series lias not yet bee" completed, though the 

 firsl contribul ion thereto lias been issued, namely, a volume of " Smith- 

 sonian meteorological tables'" of over 300 pages, it forms the first 

 of three projected volumes of tables — (A) meteorological, (B) geograph- 



