burnside] the hodgkins fund ^7^ 



Matter in the Air," by D. H. Bergey; " Ratio of Specific Heats," by 

 O. Lummer and E. Pringsheim ; " Experiments with Ionized Air," 

 and " Structure of the Nucleus," by Carl Barus. 



A competitive memoir on life in high altitudes, which was sub- 

 mitted in Spanish by Doctors A. L. Herrera and D. Vergara Lope, 

 of the City of Mexico, has been translated into French and published 

 in that language by the authors under the title "La Vie sur les hauts 

 Plateaux." The Institution has aided in the distribution of this 

 work as recording valuable data relative to the influence of life in 

 high altitudes, and especially concerning the treatment of tuberculosis 

 by altitude. The book discusses also the acclimation of plants 

 and animals to the conditions of high altitudes and, in general, sub- 

 jects relating to the influence of atmosphere on human life and 

 health. This memoir was one of those awarded a silver medal by 

 the committee. 



Frequent applications for grants are received, and notwithstanding 

 the fact that limitations on the use of the Hodgkins Fund render 

 it impossible to aid many promising and doubtless useful researches 

 thus brought to the attention of the Institution, it has still been 

 found practicable to further numerous investigations, some of which 

 have proved noteworthy. 



While the Fund is not limited in its application to questions of 

 ventilation and sanitation, those subjects were among the first to 

 receive attention. The reports, which have been published by the 

 Institution, of Dr. J. S. Billings and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, aided 

 by Dr. D. H. Bergey, on their investigation to determine the nature 

 of the peculiar substances of organic origin contained in the air 

 expired by human beings, furnish practical results, the authors con- 

 cluding that the problem of securing comfort and health in inhabited 

 rooms depends on the consideration of the best methods of prevent- 

 ing or of disposing of dusts of various kinds, of properly regulating 

 temperature and moisture, and of preventing the entrance of poison- 

 ous gases, like carbonic oxide, derived from heating and lighting 

 apparatus, rather than upon simply diluting the air to a certain 

 standard of proportion of carbonic acid present. 



An early grant from the Fund was made to Doctors Lummer and 

 Pringsheim, of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, Berlin, 

 for research on the determination of the specific heat of gases, with 

 a view of revising the value of the " y " constant. The results of 

 this -research were communicated, by permission, to the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, and issued as one of 

 the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge in a paper entitled 



