154 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



burning four hundred sextillion (400,000,000,000,000.000,000,000) 

 tons of anthracite coal. It is found that there is a variability in the 

 sun's radiation, with a range about 7 per cent irregularly in periods 

 of a week to 10 days. The sun's radiation is generally greater, par- 

 ticularly toward the center of the solar disk, at sun-spot maximum, 

 though the temperature of the earth is generally greater at sun-spot 

 minimum. Standard pyrheliometers have been recently devised by 

 the Astrophysical Observatory for measuring solar heat and are in 

 use at observatories in several parts of the world, and also a pyran- 

 ometer for measuring the intensity of skylight by day and radiation 

 outward toward the sky at night. These studies are of economic 

 agricultural importance as well as of scientific interest. 



ORIGIN OF THE INSTITUTION. 



James Smithson, of England, a graduate of Oxford University, 

 Master of Arts, Fellow of the Royal Society, a chemist and mineral- 

 ogist, made his will in 1826 bequeathing his property to the United 

 States of America to found the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- 

 ington for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. He 

 died in Italy in 1829. In July, 1835, the Secretary of State was 

 officially informed of the bequest, and on December 27, President 

 Andrew Jackson communicated the papers to Congi'ess. The mes- 

 sage of the President was referred to the Senate Committee on the 

 Judiciary and to a select committee of the House of Representatives. 

 After deliberate discussion of the authority and propriety of the 

 United States Government to accept such a trust for the purpose 

 stated, there was approved by the President, on July 1, 1836, an act 

 of Congress to authorize and enable the President to assert and 

 prosecute with effect the claim of the United States to the Smithson 

 legacy, and Mr. Richard Rush was appointed agent of the United 

 States for that purpose. 



On December 3, 1838, the Secretary of the Treasury reported to 

 the President that the bequest, amounting to $508,318.46, had been 

 paid into the Treasury of the United States. 



In a message to Congress on December 6, 1838, President Van 

 Buren invited attention to the obligation devolving upon the United 

 States to fulfill the object of the Smithson bequest. For eight years 

 thereafter the subject was under consideration in the Senate and 

 House, resulting in the founding of the Institution by an act of Con- 

 gress of August 10, 1846, and by law the Smithsonian fund was made 

 perpetually entitled to an annual income of 6 per cent interest, and 

 definite resources were thus assured for carrying out the purposes 

 and objects of the founder of the trust. Since the original bequest 

 by Smithson, other bequests and gifts have come to the Institution 



