2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1939 



The staff of the Astrophysical Observatory completed the enor- 

 mous task of recomputing the daily solar-constant values from all 

 its observing stations since 1923. It is expected that the final defin- 

 itive values will be published during the coming year. The Divi- 

 sion of Kadiation and Organisms celebrated the tenth year of its 

 existence. Many fundamental investigations have been carried out 

 during that time, and in the past year emphasis has been placed on 

 exact studies of phenomena connected with photosynthesis. 



M. W. Stirling, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 conducted a very successful archeological expedition to Mexico in 

 cooperation with the National Geographic Society. The most in- 

 teresting find was a stone monument containing an initial-series date. 

 Dr. Ales Hrdlicka completed the final season's work in his program 

 of anthropological investigations in Alaska begun in 1926. Dr. Waldo 

 L. Schmitt accompanied the Presidential cruise of 1938 to the 

 Galapagos Islands, bringing back very valuable collections in many 

 different fields. 



One new member was appointed to the Board of Regents, namely, 

 Representative William P. Cole, Jr., of Maryland, to fill the vacancy 

 created by the resignation from the House of Representatives of Hon. 

 T. Alan Goldsborough. 



SUMMARY OF THE YEAR'S ACTIVITIES OF THE BRANCHES 

 OF THE INSTITUTION 



National Museum. — The total appropriation actually available dur- 

 ing the year was $771,880, which was $3,840 less than the amount 

 available for the previous year. Accessions to the Museum collec- 

 tions, received for the most part as gifts or as the result of Smith- 

 sonian expeditions, numbered 368,082 individual specimens. This 

 brings the estimated total number of specimens in the Museum to 

 16,688,759. Some of the outstanding additions were: In anthro- 

 pology, a large number of stone implements from Indian sites in 

 Maryland, Virginia, and Alaska, and from Mousterian, Tardenoisian, 

 and Acheulean sites in South Africa, and a set of casts representing 

 the remains of the fossil ape-man of China, Sinanthropus ; in biology, 

 important marine mammal material representing whales, narwhals, 

 walruses, seals, and porpoises, extensive herpetological collections 

 made in Mexico by Dr. Hobart M. Smith, and 11,000 plant specimens 

 collected in little-known parts of Colombia by E. P. Killip of the 

 Museum staff ; in geology, a 153-pound topaz crystal from Brazil, 42 

 meteorite specimens, 25 of them representing falls new to the Museum, 

 10,000 Paleozoic fossils from the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys given 

 by John M. Nicldes, and numerous fossil vertebrates resulting from 



