42 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 
to institutions of lesser grade not entitled, under the above rules, to 
the full series, and also to the meteorclogical correspondents of the 
Institution. 
The reports are of a more popular character, and are presented— 
1. To all the meteorological observers and other collaborators of the 
Institution. 
2. To donors to its library or museum. 
3. To colleges and other educational establishments. 
4. To public libraries and literary and scientific societies. 
5. To teachers or individuals who are engaged in special studies, 
and who make direct application for them. 
Besides the works which have been published entirely at the ex- 
pense of the Institution, aid has been furnished by subscription for 
copies to be distributed to foreign libraries of a number of works 
which fall within the class adopted by the programme. The princi- 
pal works of this kind for which subscriptions have been made are as 
follows : Agassiz’s Contributions to Natural History, Gould’s Astro- 
nemical Journal, Shea’s American Linguistics, Runkle’s Mathematical 
Monthly, Deane’s Fossil Footprints, Tuomey & Holmes’s Fossils of 
South Carolina, Peirce’s Analytic Mechanics. 
Meteorology.—The investigation of all questions relative to meteor- 
ology has been an object to which the Institution has devoted special at- 
tention, and one of its first efforts was to organize a voluntary system of 
observation, which should extend as widely as possible over the whole 
of the North American continent. It induced a skilful artisan, under 
its direction, to commence the manufacture of carefully prepared and 
accurately graduated instruments, now generally known as the Smith- 
sonian standards. It prepared and furnished a series of instructions 
for the use of the instruments and the observations of meteorological 
phenomena ; also three series of blank forms as registers. 
It next organized a body of intelligent observers, and in a compar- 
atively short time brought the system into practical operation ; each 
year the number of observers increased, and where one ceased his 
connexion with the enterprise, several came forward to supply his 
place. By an arrangement with the Surgeon General of the army, 
the system of observations at the United States military posts in dif- 
ferent parts of the country, and also that which had previously been 
established by the State of New York, were remodelled so as to har- 
monize with that of the Institution. Gentlemen interested in science, 
residing in the British provinces, and at nearly all the posts of the Hud- 
son’s Bay Company, also in Mexico, Central America, the West In- 
