590 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



lies radio outfits, with their thermionic amplifiers, which also are the 

 children of that same line of pure research. 



Hertzian waves have become radio; Pasteur's bacilli have led up 

 to the Mayo brothers' surgery and the abolishment of yellow fever; 

 Faraday's and Henry's electromagnets have become dynamos and 

 telegraphs, and the whole world is revolutionized in a century by 

 the discoverers who worked not for utilities but for knowledge. 

 Yet it is a mean, stunted mind that sees only things like autos and 

 electric lights as the foremost rewards and justification of science. 

 What the sculpture of Phidias, the painting of Raphael, the music 

 of Beethoven, the language of the Bible, are to the finer departments 

 of the mind, such also, and quite as wholesome in their influence on 

 private life and public conduct, are those studies of the atoms, the 

 universe, and the march of life, which form science. 



If any of our research institutions deserves public benefactions, 

 most of all it is the national Smithsonian Institution. Founded by 

 an Englishman, James Smithson, " for the increase and diffusion of 

 ImoAvledge among men," it has been the parent of the Weather 

 Bureau, the Fish Commission, the National Museum, the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology, the Geological Survey, the National Zoological 

 Park, the Astrophysical Observatory, the Bureau of International 

 Exchanges (of scientific intelligence), and the National Gallery of 

 Art; it has contributed largely to the Library of Congress and has 

 had a part in many other valuable enterprises. In its reports and 

 technical papers the inquirer may find in accurate form, sometimes 

 popularly, sometimes technically expressed, the whole progress of 

 human knowledge. Not only that, but in a dailj^ correspondence 

 which taxes its small force of experts and clerks, it has answered 

 hundreds of thousands of inquiries for useful or tecJinical informa- 

 tion. Though some of the bureaus just named have split away from 

 the parent organization, the institution is still charged by Congress 

 with the care of eight of them. These administrative duties employ 

 much time of the staff and in some measure prevent the promotion 

 of projects for the advancement of science. 



Liberally endowed at the beginning, the resources of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution have not kept pace Avith the growth of our country. 

 Other research institutions have far outstripped this ward of the 

 whole Nation in their means for carrying on the investigation of 

 nature. Local pride seems to have outrun national pride in the 

 promotion of great scientific endowments. Thus it remains that in 

 the year 1925 the yearly income of the Smithsonian endowment still 

 is less than $70,000, and totally inadequate to the opportunities which 

 the institution's prestige and eminent connections are continually 

 presenting for maintaining its beneficent service to humanity. 



