460 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In a supplementary circular, issued in April, 1893, it was stated 

 that any branch of natural science may furnish subjects of dis- 

 cussion for the Hodgkins prizes, provided the subjects are related 

 to the study of the atmosphere in connection with the welfare of 

 men : " Thus, the anthropologist may consider the history of man 

 as affected by climate through the atmosphere ; the geologist may 

 study in this special connection the crust of the earth, whose con- 

 stituents and whose form are largely modified by atmospheric in- 

 fluences ; the botanist, the atmospheric relations of the life of the 

 plant ; the electrician, atmospheric electricity ; the mathematician 

 and physicist, problems of aerodynamics in their utilitarian appli- 

 cation ; and so on through the circle of the natural sciences, both 

 biological and physical, of which there is perhaps not one which 

 is necessarily excluded. 



" In explanation of the donor's wishes, which the institution 

 desires scrupulously to observe, it may be added that Mr. Hodg- 

 kins illustrated the catholicity of his plan by citing the experi- 

 ments of Franklin in atmospheric electricity and the work of the 

 late Paul Bert upon the relations of the atmosphere to life as 

 subjects of research which, in his own view, might be properly 

 considered in this relationship." 



Eight thousand copies of these circulars were sent to institu- 

 tions and investigators throughout the world, arid applications 

 for grants soon reached the Secretary of the Smithsonian. 



In 1893 two grants were made : one of five hundred dollars to 

 Dr. O. Lummer and Dr. E. Pringsheim, of the Physical Institute, 

 Berlin University, for researches on the determination of an 

 exact measure of the cooling of gases while expanding; and a 

 second grant of one thousand dollars to Dr. J. S. Billings, United 

 States Army, and Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, for investi- 

 gations into the nature of the peculiar substances of organic origin 

 contained in the air expired by human beings, with specific ref- 

 erence to the ventilation of inhabited rooms. 



Mr. Thomas George Hodgkins died November 25, 1892, at the 

 advanced age of nearly ninety years; being, next to Smithson, 

 the most generous benefactor of the institution. A brief sketch 

 of his life is appropriate. He was born in England in 1803, of 

 highly respectable ancestry; his early education was in France, 

 where he acquired language, habits, and manners influencing all 

 his later life. At the age of seventeen, led by a youth's love 

 of adventure, and seeking relief from domestic unhappiness, he 

 shipped before the mast on a trading vessel bound for Calcutta. 

 The vessel was wrecked near the mouth of the Hoogly and the 

 young man found himself penniless, friendless, and ill in a hos- 

 pital in Calcutta. While in this sad plight, he made up his mind, 

 so he said, to acquire a fortune and to devote it to philanthropic 



