REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 9 



The distinguished specialists who form the committee on award 

 for the examination of the memoirs submitted in the Hodgkins prize 

 competition, announced in connection with the Congress on Tuber- 

 culosis of 1908, have not yet submitted their decision. This delay 

 is regretted by the Institution as sincerely as by the competitors, but 

 has seemed to be unavoidable as the large number of papers pre- 

 sented and their technical character make it very difficult to render 

 a prompt decision. 



Then, too, it is to be remembered that, according to the terms of 

 the competition, the successful paper is to embody an original theory 

 or discovery for the treatment of tuberculosis, not before published, 

 a difficult task at a time when the attention of the medical world is 

 so generally directed to the same subject. 



The Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, the publication of 

 which by the Hodgkins fund of the Institution was unfortunately 

 delayed by causes beyond the control of the Institution, was com- 

 pleted just at the close of the fiscal year, as mentioned on another 

 page. 



SMITHSONIAN TABLE AT NAPLES ZOOLOGICAL STATION. 



The Smithsonian Institution for 18 years past has maintained a 

 table for the use of American biologists at the Naples Zoological 

 Station. Exceptional opportunities are there afforded for the study 

 of marine life, and it is believed that the cause of biological science 

 has been thereby much advanced. 



The application of Dr. R. S. Williams, of Miami University, 

 mentioned in the Secretary's Report for 1910, was approved for 

 March and April, 1911. Dr. Williams was chiefly occupied at 

 Naples in ascertaining the rate of growth of recent encrusting 

 organisms, especially bryozoans, with a view to the use of this 

 information in researches on the Richmond division of the Ordo- 

 vician period. The results thus far obtained by him he considers 

 preliminary, and he proposes to continue the same research at some 

 future time on a float anchored in the open sea. 



In addition to his work on the bryozoan fauna, Dr. Williams 

 secured a representative collection of the jaw apparatus of the 

 free-swimming annelids belonging to the Eunicidea and the 

 Glyceridea. 



The appointment of Dr. Sergius Morgulis, a Parker Traveling 

 Fellow from Harvard for 1911, was approved for the Smithsonian 

 seat at Naples for the months of May, June, and July of this year. 



Dr. C. W. Hargitt, of Syracuse University, a Smithsonian ap- 

 pointee at Naples for three months in 1903, was accorded a second 

 occupancy during the present year. Several papers, among which 



