12 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



journals was undertaken by the Institution and a large extension of their 

 distribution was thus eiiected by including their re-issue in the Miscella- 

 neous Collections, of which series they constitute three volumes. These 

 societies having now severally attained a highly successful and self-sup- 

 porting condition of active membership, it has been thought that this 

 form of patronage might well be withdrawn without detriment to the 

 welfare of the societies and with advantage to the Institution. Those 

 publications are accordingly uo longer stereotyped by the Institution, or 

 included in its issues. 



The Bulletins and Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum, pub- 

 lished by an appropriation of Congress, liave also been heretofore re- 

 printed by the Institution and this supplementary edition has occupied 

 five volumes of the Miscellaneous Collections. It has been decided in 

 like manner to hereafter omit these publications from the series. 



Sinithsonian Annual Reports. — A provision of the act of Congress or- 

 ganizing the Smithsonian Institution (Revised Statutes, Title 73, Sec. 

 5593) requires that " the Board shall submit to Congress at each ses- 

 sion thereof a report of the operations, expenditures, and condition of 

 the Institution." These annual reports have been accompanied with a 

 " general appendix," giving summaries of lectures, interesting extracts 

 from the correspondence, and accounts of the results of explorations 

 undertaken by the Institution or aided and promoted by it, as well as 

 of new discoveries in science. In the annual report for 1880 and the 

 following years my lamented predecessor undertook to give a more 

 systematic character to the history of discoveries, by engaging a num- 

 ber of able collaborators in various fields of knowledge, to furnish a gen- 

 eral summary or record of scientific progress for the year. Appropri- 

 ate as the scheme appears, it has not been found to work as satisfacto- 

 rily as is desirable, and as had been hoped for. It has seldom been 

 possible to collect as complete summaries as were originally contem- 

 plated ; and the delay of publication deprives the record of much of the 

 freshness and interest it would otherwise possess, while in all these the 

 rapid increase of scientific literature demanded such a corresponding 

 increase in the corps of reporters and such a correlatively increasing 

 expenditure as the fixed Smithsonian fund was growing quite unable 

 to afford. It will be remembered that of this appendix there are dis- 

 tributed through members of Congress as many as 9,000 copies, form- 

 ing the larger part of the whole edition, and that it is thus incumbent 

 on us to observe that it reaches a large class of readers unable to follow 

 the work of specialists in original memoirs. 



After serious consideration it has been finally determined to restrict, 

 if not forego, the scheme of a general annual survey of scientific litera- 

 ture and progress, and to recur in large part to the system of Henry 

 of selecting memoirs of a special interest and permanent value, which 

 have already appeared elsewhere and which are sufficiently uutechuical 



