Appendix II. 



PUBLICATIONS OF THE YEAR. 



SMITHSONIAN CONTrUBUTIONS TO KN'OWLKDOE. 



Of this series, no work has been piihlishod iluriiig the \)i\»t year. A memoir ou the 

 archa-olej" V of North Ameriea has been for several years in course of iireiiaratiou by 

 Dr. Charles Kan, the late curator of the department of Pre-historic Antiquities, and 

 several thousand dollars. have been expended in the production of drawings by Mr. 

 C. F. Trill and others, under Dr. Rau's direction, for the purpose of properly illus- 

 trating the work. Dr. Rau's illness at the beginning of the past tiscal year, and his 

 death in Julj', 1887, have arrested the progressof this undertaking. The unfinished 

 work will, liowever, be taken up by his successor, Mr. Thomas Wilson, and prosecuted 

 to an early completion, and it is not improbable that this work may be 2)ub]ished in 

 the above series. 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS. 



Of this series three volumes have been published during the year, besides several 

 i ndependent treatises. Taking these in the order in which they appear in the printed 

 lists, they are as follows: 



r/Jl. " Synoptical Flora of North America : The Gamopetahe ; being a second edition 

 of Vol. I, Part II, and Vol. ii, Part i, collected," by Asa Gray, LL. D. Of these two 

 portions, the earlier — the last part of the proposed tirst volume— comprises 480 pages, 

 and the latter — being the commencing part of the proposed second volume— com- 

 prises 4U4 pages; forming in the aggregate, with introductory matter, an octavo vol- 

 ume of 9F6 pages. As long as forty years ago, Dr. Gray, in cooperation with Dr. 

 Torrey, undertook a comprehensive classilication of the North American llora, which, 

 liowever, never was completed, stopping w ith a synopsis of the polypetalous, and 

 about half the gamopetalous divisions of the Dicotyledons, or to the close of the 

 imU-r of ComposHo'. Ambitious of reconstructing and completing the long contem- 

 plated work, Dr. Gray, postponing the tirst part of Vol. i (the Polypetahv), has taken 

 lip, for the second part of the volume, the Gamopcialw as far as the comiiietion of the 

 r(»m;>os{7«', and has continued the remaining orders of the Gamo{)etahe as the lirst 

 l)art of the succeeding volume. The lamented death of the author has left his great 

 work still unfinished; the third division of the Dicotyledons (the ApctaUv), and the 

 Monoctyle<lons having been designed to form the second i>art of Vol. ll. The present 

 two detached portions of successive volumes, however, have a unity in beingocciipied 

 entirely with the GumopelaUr, and they constitute a full and systematic! descriptive 

 catalogue or synopsis of this great division. 



Several thousand dt)lhirs have been expended by the Institution in furthering this 

 important l)otanical work, which probalily cost the author nearly as much more. In 

 consideration of this. Dr. Gray was allowed to issue for his own benefit a first edition 

 of the work of 500 copies before the Institution attempted to publish its own edition, 

 which has thus only lately appeared. 



"Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. xxxi."' This volume is occupied with the two 

 parts of the " Flora of North America,"' by Dr. Asa Gray, just described ; a separate 

 edition of 500 copies of the work having been issued as "No. 591," for special dia- 



