49 6 The Smithsonian Institution 



due to the initiative and encouragement of the members of 

 the staff of the Smithsonian Institution. 



A very interesting suggestion was made in Congress in 

 1851, by Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi. When the bill con- 

 taining the appropriation of money to purchase books for the 

 Library of Congress was under consideration, he proposed 

 an amendment requiring that the plates and engravings of 

 the report of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, which had 

 been made at the expense of the United States, should be 

 delivered to the Smithsonian Institution for the issuing of a 

 new edition. All students of science will deplore the fact 

 that this important amendment was lost. 



In addition to these three series, and excepting the pub- 

 lications of the bureaus under the direction of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, it has issued certain other publications which 

 may be, for want of any particular designation, called " Spe- 

 cial Publications." One of these is a quarto volume of almost 

 twelve hundred pages, entitled "The Results of Meteoro- 

 logical Observations made under the Direction of the United 

 States Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution," and 

 published by the government in 1861 as a general report 

 of the Commissioner of Patents and the Secretary of the 

 Smithsonian Institution. The memoirs of Professor James 

 P. Espy on Meteorology, one of which was embodied in a 

 message to the President of the United States, the others 

 being reports made to the Secretary of the Navy, were all 

 prepared as a part of the Smithsonian meteorological work, 

 the staff being the observers attached to the Institution. 



The first publication of the Institution was entitled " Hints 

 on Public Architecture," being really a careful description of 

 the proposed building of the Institution, by Robert Dale 

 Owen, chairman of the building committee. A half dozen 

 detached papers which have never been included in any of 



