REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 79 
A comparison of the figures given in the above table with those 
in the report for last year will show a substantial gain in the number 
of packages received from abroad. This is gratifying, because the 
packages received from abroad have always been fewer in number 
than those sent; although, as referred to in previous reports, this 
disparity is not so great as would appear, for many foreign publica- 
tions reach correspondents in this country direct by mail and not 
through exchange channels. 
On account of many complaints of delay in the distribution of 
packages sent to China through the American-Chinese publication 
exchange department of the Shanghai Bureau of Foreign Affairs, 
shipments to that country were suspended May 18, 1925. In De- 
cember, 1925, all packages on hand for China were forwarded to the 
Zi-ka-wei Observatory near Shanghai, the director of that observa- 
tory, Rev. Father L. Froc, 8. J., having kindly signified his willing- 
ness to undertake their distribution. The Zi-ka-wei Observatory, it 
might be added, acted as the Smithsonian exchange agency in China 
before the work was taken over by the Shanghai Bureau of Foreign 
Affairs. The Government of the Chinese Republic recently adhered 
to the Brussels Exchange Conventions of 1886 and organized a 
Bureau of International Exchange of Publications as a department 
of the Ministry of Education in Peking. The first consignment of 
exchanges to this newly established bureau was forwarded May 4, 
1926. 
During the year 2,521 boxes were used in forwarding exchanges to 
foreign agencies for distribution—an increase of 196 over the number 
for the preceding 12 months. Of the total number of boxes 
shipped abroad, 389 were for the foreign depositories of full sets of 
United States governmental documents and the remainder (2,132) in- 
cluded departmental and other publications for depositories of par- 
tial sets and for miscellaneous correspondents. 
As was stated in the report for 1925, the Smithsonian exchange 
service, as a rule, forwards its consignments to other countries in 
boxes, but sometimes the packages that accumulate for a particular 
country are not of sufficient bulk to warrant their transmission by 
freight, this latter material being mailed directly to its destination. 
In addition, a number of packages are forwarded by mail to remote 
places which can not be reached through existing exchange channels. 
During the year the number of packages sent abroad in this manner 
was 49,087. 
The number of boxes sent to each country is given in the table 
following. 
