12 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
prevention of disease and its cure. In following out this sphere of 
work the Institution issued a circular, under date of February 3, 
1908, offering a prize of $1,500 for the best treatise on “ The relation 
of atmospheric air to tuberculosis” that should be presented at the 
international congress on tuberculosis, which was held in Washington 
from September 21 to October 12, 1908. This prize aroused wide- 
spread interest among the students on this subject and resulted in 
the receipt by the Institution of 81 papers submitted in competition. 
All of these have been referred to the committee on awards, whose 
report is expected in a short time. 
Grants from the Hodgkins fund, although not numerous during 
the past year, have been the means of furthering important investiga- 
tions which are still in progress. 
RESEARCHES ON ATMOSPHERIC AIR. 
A Hodgkins grant was approved in October, 1908, for the erection 
of a small stone shelter on the summit of Mount Whitney, California, 
for the use of investigators during the prosecution of researches on 
atmospheric air, or on subjects closely related thereto. 
The pioneer trip to the summit of Mount Whitney in the summer 
of 1881 by the late Secretary Langley, at that time director of the 
Allegheny Observatory, will be recalled in this connection as well 
as his earnestly expressed conviction that in no country is there a 
finer site for meteorological and atmospheric observations than the 
United States possesses in Mount Whitney and its neighboring peaks. 
As emphasized in the report of the Langley expedition, a per- 
manent shelter on the peak is an absolute necessity for the prose- 
cution of continued observations there, and the erection of such a 
shelter has now been made possible by the extension of railway 
facilities toward the base of the mountain and the improvement 
of the trails to the summit. 
Mr. C. G. Abbot, who succeeded Secretary Langley as director of 
the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, and 
to whose immediate suggestion and earnest personal efforts the prep- 
aration for and the establishment of this important post on Mount 
Whitney are largely due, began his observations there in the summer 
of 1909, and obtained important data in the determination of the 
solar constant. 
The cooperation of Prof. W. W. Campbell, the director of Lick 
Observatory, University of California, at Mount Hamilton, has been 
most helpful during the erection of the shelter, and the interest of 
many of the citizens of Lone Pine, near the border line of the govern- 
ment reservation, has been heartily and patriotically expressed. It 
is easily seen that the local feeling in favor of the station will make 
its occupation more readily and comfortably available by members 
