SECRETARY'S REPORT 9 



Evans, superintendent of the Upper Air Research Observatory, Air 

 Force Cambridge Research Center, Sunspot, N. Mex, The subject of 

 Dr. Evans's address was "Solar Influence on the Earth." This lecture 

 will be published in full in the general appendix to the Annual Report 

 of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1954. 



Dr. Henry Thompson Rowell, chairman of the department of 

 classics at Johns Hopkins University, delivered a lecture in the 

 auditorium of the Natural History Building on the evening of Jan- 

 uary 28, 1954, on the subject "Rome of the Flavians." This lecture 

 was sponsored jointly by the Smithsonian Institution and the 

 Archaeological Institute of America. 



Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot, former Secretary of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, on April 1, 1954, lectured on "The Smithsonian Astro- 

 physical Observatory." He related the distinguished history of the 

 Astrophysical Observatory and described the important research this 

 agency has been and is doing, both in Washington and at its field 

 stations in California and Chile, in scientific studies of solar energy 

 and radiation as related to life on the earth. 



SUMMARY OF THE YEAR'S ACTIVITIES OF THE INSTITUTION 



National Museum. — The working collections of the Smithsonian 

 Institution are an essential tool to scientists who come to us from all 

 over the country. On an average day at least 100 scientists, not on 

 the Smithsonian staff, are at work in our buildings and laboratories. 

 To keep these working collections, which are in one sense the "bureau 

 of standards" in our fields, in a growing and as complete as possible a 

 form is most important. This year these unique and world-famous 

 collections were increased by approximately 632,000 specimens during 

 the year, bringing the total catalog entries to 35,302,807. Some of the 

 year's outstanding accessions included: In anthropology, over 8,700 

 objects from an archeological site in Kansas representing the earliest 

 date ever assigned to a pottery-bearing site in the Central Plains, 800 

 archeological specimens from Korea, and a collection of ethnographi- 

 cal materials from southern Colombia; in zoology, 1,500 small mam- 

 mals from Korea, 625 mammals, 1,800 birds, and 100,000 mosquitoes 

 from Thailand, nearly 5,600 marine invertebrates from the Caroline 

 Islands, and 32,000 Cuban shells ; in botany, about 24,000 plant speci- 

 mens from the Fiji Islands and a transfer of over 65,000 miscellaneous 

 plants from the herbarium of the National Arboretum; in geology, 

 2,000 selected negatives of photomicrographs of meteoric iron, the 

 finest known crystal of the rare mineral genthelvite, many fine fossil 

 invertebrates, and 600 rare Paleocene and Eocene mammals; in 

 engineering and industries, an early wool-carding machine and im- 

 portant additions to the antibiotic exliibit; and in history, a one- 



