12 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



MEETING IN HONOR OF MADAME CURIE. 



A meeting in honor of Madame Curie, the codiscoverer of radium, 

 was held in the auditorium of the National Museum the evening of 

 May 20, 1921, by the Madame Curie Committee of Washington. The 

 address of welcome to Madame Curie was delivered by your secre- 

 tary, honorary chairman of the committee, who said in part : 



In your personality as a child of Poland and a citizen of France you recall 

 to us the inspiration that has come to our national life from those lands and as 

 a scientist the inspiration and courage that you have given to every research 

 student in America. * * * Your discovery of the two elements, polonium 

 and radium, and the determination of their atomic weights and many of their 

 properties, awards you a place in the foremost rank of the world's research 

 workers, while your generous devotion to science and the application of your 

 work to the alleviation of human suffering, asking for yourself only the privi- 

 lege of continuing your work, place you among the great benefactors of man- 

 kind. Moreover, your work has another great underlying value. It has demon- 

 strated to the public at large and to those who control Government expenditure 

 for scientific research, the inevitable ultimate benefit to humanity of research in 

 the domain of pure science, however distant it may seem in the beginning from 

 useful application. 



The meeting was also addressed by Miss Julia Lathrop, and a 

 lecture on radium was given by Dr. K. A. Millikan, of the University 

 of Chicago. 



CINCHONA BOTANICAL STATION. 



The lease of the Cinchona Botanical Station held by the Smith- 

 sonian Institution on behalf of several American botanical agencies, 

 mentioned in previous reports, was terminated on June 30, 1921, as 

 the colonial Government of Jamaica decided to retain the station for 

 the use of British and Jamaican botanists. It is hoped that the 

 Institute for Kesearch in Tropical America, recently organized in 

 this country, will soon be able to provide some station affording 

 advantages similar to those of the Cinchona station for botanical 

 research in the Tropics. 



PUBLICATIONS. 



There were issued during the year by the Smithsonian Institution 

 and its branches 113 volumes and pamphlets. Of these publications 

 there were distributed a total of 142,208 copies, including 255 volumes 

 and separates of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 12,922 

 volumes and separates of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 

 24,423 volumes and separates of the Smithsonian annual reports, 

 89,000 volumes and separates of the publications of the National 

 Museum, 12,795 publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 2,000 special publications, 14 volumes of the Annals of the Astro- 

 physical Observatory, 40 reports on the Harriman Alaska expedi- 



