16 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



In your personality as a child of Poland and a citizen of France you recall 

 to us the inspiration that has come to our national life from those lands and as 

 a scientist the inspiration and courage that you have given to every research 

 student in America. * * * Your discovery of the two elements, polonium 

 and radium, and the determination of their atomic weights and many of their 

 properties, awards you a place in the foremost rank of the world's research 

 workers, while your generous devotion to science and the application of your 

 work to the alleviation of human suffering, asking for yourself only the privi- 

 lege of continuing your work, place you among the great benefactors of man- 

 kind. Moreover, your work has another great underlying value. It has dem- 

 onstrated to the public at large and to those who control government expendi- 

 ture for scientific research, the inevitable ultimate benefit to humanity of re- 

 search in the domain of pure science, however distant it may seem in the be- 

 ginning frqm useful application. 



The meeting was also addressed by Miss Julia Latlirop, and a lec- 

 ture on radium was given by Dr. E. A. Millikan, of the University 

 of Chicago. 



CINCHONA BOTANICAL STATION. 



The lease of the Cinchona Botanical Station held by the Smith- 

 sonian Institution on behalf of several American botanical agencies, 

 mentioned in previous reports, was terminated on June 30, 1921, as 

 the colonial Government of Jamaica decided to retain the station for 

 the use of British and Jamaican botanists. It is hoped that the In- 

 stitute for Kesearch in Tropical America, recently organized in this 

 country, will soon be able to provide some station affording ad- 

 vantages similar to those of the Cinchona station for botanical re- 

 search in the Tropics. 



PUBLICATIONS. 



There were issued during the year by the Smithsonian Institution 

 and its branches 113 volumes and pamphlets. Of these publications 

 there were distributed a total of 142,208 copies, including 255 volumes 

 and separates of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 12,922 

 volumes and separates of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 

 24,423 volumes and separates of the Smithsonian annual reports, 

 89,000 volumes and separates of the publications of the National 

 Museum, 12,795 publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 2,000 special publications, 14 volumes of the Annals of the Astro- 

 physical Observatory, 40 reports on the Harriman Alaska expedi- 

 tion, 414 reports of the American Historical Association, and 345 

 publications presented to but not issued by the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion. 



The publications of the Institution and its branches are the prin- 

 cipal means of carrying out one of its chief purposes, the " diffusion 

 of knowledge." They cover practically every branch of science and 

 are distributed to libraries, educational and scientific establishments, 

 and interested individuals throughout the world. The annual report 



