ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1950 



VISITORS 



Visitors to the Smithsonian buildings during the year totaled 

 2,600,758, only slightly less than last year's all-time record of attend- 

 ance. March 1950 was the month of largest attendance, with 371,811 

 visitors; August 1949 was the next largest, with 349,318. A summary 

 of attendance records for the five buildings is given in table 1 : 



Table 1. — Visitors to the Smithsonian buildings during the year ended June SO, 1950 



Year and month 



Smith- 

 sonian 

 Building 



Arts and 

 Industries 

 Building 



Natural 

 History 

 Building 



Aircraft 

 Building 



Freer 

 Gallery 

 of Art 



Total 



mo 



July 



Aup:ust 



September 



October 



November 



December 



1960 



January 



February 



March 



April 



May 



June 



Total 



65, 007 

 72, 446 

 43, 497 

 31. 946 

 24,818 

 16, 612 



19,929 

 19, 800 

 22, 660 

 66, 915 

 54,660 

 57, 729 



149, 084 

 158. 653 

 97, 510 

 73. 702 

 51,729 

 32, 125 



40,461 

 39, 770 

 48. 608 

 172, 514 

 143, 966 

 141,897 



75, 627 

 86,490 

 56, 072 

 55, 248 

 38, 732 

 27,628 



35, 166 

 34,968 

 41,311 

 105, 430 

 91,717 

 76, 559 



22, 763 

 23,179 

 13,540 

 11,979 

 9.933 

 6,559 



8.125 

 8,214 

 8,698 

 19, 308 

 17, 603 

 17, 170 



7,954 

 8,550 

 7,932 

 4,835 

 3, 261 

 1,951 



2,772 

 2,687 

 2,976 

 7,644 

 6,653 

 6,686 



320, 435 

 349, 318 

 218. 551 

 177. 710 

 128,473 

 84, 776 



106. 453 

 105. 439 

 124. 253 

 371.811 

 313. 599 

 299, 941 



495, 919 



1,150,019 



724, 948 



167, 071 



62, 801 



2, 600, 768 



SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL JAMES ARTHUR LECTURE ON THE SUN 



In 1931 the Institution received a bequest from James Arthur, of 

 New York, a part of the income from which was to be used for an 

 annual lecture on some aspect of the study of the sun. 



The seventeenth Arthur lecture was delivered in the auditorium of 

 the Natural History Building on April 6, 1950, by Dr. Bertil Lindblad, 

 Director of the Stockholm Observatory, Stockholm, Sweden. The 

 subject of Dr. Lindblad's address was "The Luminous Surface and 

 Atmosphere of the Sun." His lecture is published in full in the Gen- 

 eral Appendix of the present Report of the Board of Regents (p. 173.) 



SUMMARY OF THE YEAR'S ACTIVITIES OF THE BRANCHES OF THE 



INSTITUTION 



National Museum. — The national collections were increased during 

 the year by approximately 793,300 specimens, a large increase over 

 the previous year, bringing the total number of catalog entries in all 

 six departments to 32,375,597. Noteworthy accessions for the year 

 included: In anthropology, nearly a thousand pottery, stone, and 

 other objects from the Neolithic period of northern Honshu, Japan, 

 and a further lot of ethnological specimens obtained in northern 

 Australia by the 1948 expedition to Arnhem Land sponsored by the 



