4 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 2 8 



They include not only technical descriptions of original research 

 of specialists in many lines, but also timely, readable, yet authoritative 

 accounts of many of the principal scientific developments of our 

 time. 



Not less world-wide in distribution and value than its activities 

 for its diffusion are the Smithsonian's accomplishments for the 

 increase of knowledge. In consideration of our present status let 

 me draw attention to several unique advantages which render the 

 Institution responsible for the cultivation of research. The Na- 

 tional Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Freer collec- 

 tions, and, to a lesser extent, the Zoological Park, contain much of 

 the basis on which research in natural history and ethnology must 

 forever depend. What the public sees in the National Museum is not 

 a tithe of its national wealth. The study collections which crowd 

 the laboratories and corridors of the Natural History Building and 

 Smithsonian Building represent the fauna, flora, geology, paleontol- 

 ogy, and ethnology of our country and other regions. They contain 

 thousands of type specimens, to which the scientific world looks as 

 standards. They include thousand,s of series exhibiting the modi- 

 fying influences of environment. They contain specimens which 

 were collected many years ago, and of which the march of progress 

 has now forever cut off the possibility of duplication. 



Extensive researches of scientific value, and not infrequently of im- 

 mediate practical utility, have already been based on this material. 

 But one who has any conception at all of the opportunity can not 

 but be impressed with Smithsonian responsibility. Not only must 

 the task of collecting and preserving specimens of the fauna, flora, 

 ethnological, and paleontological material at present available be dili- 

 gently pushed forward, lest they be forever lost, but the intensive 

 study of the collections must also be a major task, lest the lessons 

 they might teach should be lost to our generation. 



Joseph Henry was not only one of America's foremost men of 

 vision and of action, but a great physicist. In his time the physical 

 sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, meteorology 

 were ardently cultivated by the Smithsonian. Yet for many years 

 past the Institution's principal contribution to research in such lines 

 has been in its administration of the Astrophysical Observatory. 

 There has been trained there a corps of investigators w^liose expert 

 knowledge of the conditions governing the flow of radiation and of 

 heat is a valuable asset, and a large collection of special apparatus lies 

 in their care. During the years that they have devoted to studies of 

 solar and terrestrial radiation there has at length developed a public 

 demand for progress in our knowledge of the relations of radiation 

 to climate, to the growth of plants, and to the health of human 



