362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
sum of 20,000 franes (incorporated in the extra budget for the Navy) 
for each appropriation is set aside for the construction and furnishing 
of this institute. Besides the Royal Italian Thalassographic Com- 
mittee, they have created local committees to participate im the gen- 
eral work, but especially to study local problems: Ligurian, Adriatic, 
Parthenopian, and Sicilian committees. 
It is to the study of the Adriatic that the Italian efforts are mainly 
directed. An agreement concluded with the Austro-Hungarian Gov- 
ernment following a conference of delegates of the two allied countries 
at Venice, in May, 1910, paved the way for this collaboration. Four 
cruises each year, in February, in May, in August, in November 
(those of November, 1911, February and May, 1912, could not be 
carried on on account of the Tripolitan war), were to be undertaken 
following eight determined traverses, making observations and meas- 
urements according to an established technique with the standard 
instruments. The fourteenth cruise of the Cyclops (Italy) and of 
the Naiad (Austria-Hungary), which were to close the program of 
periodical investigations to be made in the Adriatic, took place in 
February, 1914. 
Finally, the international commission for the study of the Medi- 
terranean has thus far met three times under the honorary presidency 
of S. A. S. the Prince of Monaco. At the last meeting, at Rome, in 
1914, the Italians presented a complete plan of investigations for 
that sea, inspired by that which they had followed in the Adriatic, 
and laid out work for each of the nations bordermg on the Medi- 
terranean. 
