16 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



pursuit in extending the domain of knowledge. The objects of nature, 

 like the specimens of high art, are the luxuries of the cultivated mind, 

 and the awakening of a taste for the study affords an inexhaustible 

 source of pleasure and contentment to the most numerous and the 

 most important classes of the community." 



In carrying out the policy planned for the Miscellaneous Collections, 

 there have been published in the 40 volumes of that series 106 bio 

 logical papers, 67 physical papers, and 22 papers of a business charac- 

 ter, such as lists of libraries, publications, and of correspondents. 



The Annual Reports are accompanied by an appendix distinct in 

 purpose from the other publications of the Institution. Formerly the 

 Institution published a summary of the progress of science in all its 

 branches during the year, but this grew so increasingly inadequate 

 with the more numerous fields that science occupied that it was dis- 

 continued, and in its place has been published a series of articles, 

 occasionally original, but more frequently drawn from other and 

 nontechnical publications, giving short popular memoirs by writers of 

 authority on the subjects familiar to each, and collectively a resume 

 of those of most special interest in all departments of science which have 

 appeared during the year. The special characteristic of these memoirs 

 is that, while authoritative, they are nontechnical and of interest to 

 the general reader, and there are few portions of the work of the 

 Institution which more effectively serve in the diffusion of knowledge 

 than this. 



The Institution publishes through the National Museum the Pro- 

 ceedings and the Bulletin and an Annual Report. Through the Bureau 

 of Ethnology there are likewise issued very complete works on Ameri- 

 can Ethnology. 



During the past year the Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory 

 have for the first time appeared, the first volume having been put to 

 press and practically published at the close of the fiscal year. This 

 work is discussed somewhat in detail in the paragraph devoted to the 

 Observatory. It is an exhaustive account of the work of the Secre- 

 tar}^ during a long series of years in his study of the infra-red solar 

 spectrum, a work begun at Allegheny in 1878, and continued in the 

 Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution. 



An important work put in type during the year, under special 

 authority of Congress, was a Documentary and Legislative History 

 of the Institution from 1836 to 1899, comprising about 1,900 pages, 

 to be published in two volumes. 



There has also been in hand a second Supplement to Bolton^s Bibli- 

 ography of Chemistry, giving about 6,000 titles of academic disserta- 

 tions. The first part of the Museum portion of the Smithsonian 

 Report for 1897 was distributed early in the .vear; but the second part, 

 to consist of some of the more important papers by the late Assistant 

 Secretary, Dr. Goodo, has not been completed. Both the Smith- 



