2 ANNUAL BEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



THE BOARD OP REGENTS 



The affairs of the Institution are administered by a Board of 

 Regents whose membership consists of "the Vice President, the 

 Chief Justice, three Members of the Senate, and three Members of 

 the House of Representatives, together with six other persons other 

 than Members of Congress, two of whom shall be resident in the 

 city of Washington, and the other four shall be inhabitants of some 

 State, but no two of them of the same State." One of the Regents 

 is elected chancellor by the board ; in the past the selection has fallen 

 upon the Vice President or the Chief Justice ; and a suitable person is 

 chosen by the Regents as secretary of the Institution, who is also 

 secretary of the Board of Regents and the executive officer directly 

 in charge of the Institution's activities. 



The following changes occurred in the personnel of the board 

 during the year : The Hon. Charles G. Davv^es, as Vice President, be- 

 came on March 4, 1925, a Regent of the Institution ex officio. Sena- 

 tor Reed Smoot, of Utah, was appointed a Regent on December 2, 

 1924, to succeed Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, deceased. Senator 

 George Wharton Pepper, of Pennsylvania, was appointed a mem- 

 ber of the board on December 3, 1924, to succeed Senator Medill Mc- 

 Cormick, resigned. Senator Woodbridge N. Ferris, of Michigan, 

 was appointed on March 11, 1925, to succeed Senator A. Owsley 

 Stanley, whose term as a Regent expired with his retirement from 

 the Senate. 



The roll of Regents at the close of the fiscal yeav was as follows : 

 William H. Taft, Chief Justice of the United States, chancellor; 

 Charles G. Dawes, Vice President of the United States; members 

 from the Senate, Reed Smoot, George Wharton Pepper, Woodbridge 

 N. Ferris; members from the House of Representatives, Albert 

 Johnson, R. AValton Moore, AValter H. Newton; citizen members, 

 George Gray, Delaware; Charles F. Choate, jr., Massachusetts; 

 Henry White, Washington, D. C. ; Robert S. Brookings, Missouri ; 

 Irwin B. Laughlin, Pennsylvania; and Frederic A. Delano, Wash- 

 ington, D. C. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 



The past year marks a crisis in the affairs of the Institution. For 

 several years past it has grown more and more difficult to stretch 

 the income from its meager endowment sufficiently to cover the 

 steadily increasing costs of even the limited amount of research 

 which can be undertaken and of the administration of the eight 

 growing Government bureaus. The cost of publishing is more than 

 twice that of 10 years ago, which has resulted in materially de- 

 creasing the output of Smithsonian publications. The research work 

 of the Institution is now limited practically to the paleontological 



