146 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 57. 



rigny, of Paris, for the best popular treatise 

 in accordance with the terms of the an- 

 nouncement, and three silver and six bronze 

 medals awarded to the laureates out of 

 nearly 200 contestants. The medals which 

 have been designed by Mons. T. C. Chap- 

 lain, a member of the French Institute and 

 the most famous medalist in the world, 

 are being struck at the government mint in 

 Paris and will soon be ready for distribution. 



The Secretary expressed the opinion that 

 the giving of a large prize having served its 

 purpose in attracting the attention of the 

 world to the Hodgkins Fund and the pur- 

 poses of its founder, it would probably not be 

 wise to offer at present additional large 

 prizes of this kind, since these have rarely 

 been found efficacious in stimulating dis- 

 covery ; and that hereafter the income 

 should be spent directly in aid of investiga- 

 tions in regard to the atmosphere and its 

 properties. 



Speaking of the Hodgkins bequest, Secre- 

 tary Langley dwelt upon the idea that the 

 foresight of Mr. Hodgkins has been in one 

 particular remarkably justified, since the 

 experience of the last three years has shown 

 that there is no department in the field of 

 human thought, apart from such abstract 

 ones as aesthetics, higher mathematics, logic 

 and the like, which does not come under 

 the purview of this donation; so that the 

 restriction of the income from this $100,000 

 of the bequest to the special purpose of in- 

 vestigations regarding atmospheric air is in 

 reality no embarrasment or limitation of 

 the free activities of the Institution. 



Attention was also directed to the recent 

 bequest of Mr. Eobert Stanton Avery, of 

 Washington, the value of which has been 

 estimated at $50,000, but which it seems 

 pi'obable will not prove to be nearly so 

 large. 



The present year, 1896, being the fiftieth 

 since the foundation of the Institution, the 

 occasion will be celebrated by the erection 



of bronze tablets to the memory of the 

 founder, James Smithson, upon his tomb 

 in the English cemetery in Genoa, and also 

 in the English church in the same city. A 

 preliminary design of this tablet by Mr. 

 William Ordway Partridge was submitted 

 for inspection. 



There will also be published a semi-cen- 

 tennial volume, giving an account of the 

 origin of the Institution and summing up 

 the results of its fifty years' activities in 

 every department of science. This volume 

 will be handsomely printed, in an edition 

 sufficiently large to supply all the principal 

 libraries of the world; and will contain 

 portraits of the founder; the Chancellors — 

 George M. Dallas, Millard Fillmore, Roger 

 B. Taney, Salmon P. Chase, Morrison E. 

 Waite and Melville W. Fuller; and those 

 of the regents who have contributed most 

 materially to the development and influence 

 of the Institution, such as James A. Pierce, 

 Alexander Dallas Bache, Louis Agassiz and 

 George Bancroft. Chapters will ' be con- 

 tributed by a considerable number of the 

 most prominent scientific men and educa- 

 tors of the United States. 



Allusion was made by the Secretary to 

 the table at the Zoological Station at 

 Naples, rented by the Institution for the 

 benefit of investigators and students of 

 American natural historj^, and to the fact 

 that the popularity of this undertaking is 

 so great that petitions from eight of the 

 principal natural history societies of the 

 country, four of them national, including 

 together some 3,000 members, and a peti- 

 tion signed by 200 of the principal natural- 

 ists of the country, have been received, urg- 

 ing their continuance of the table for an- 

 other period of three years. 



The Secretary also called attention to the 

 crowded condition of the ISTational Museum 

 and the necessity of new buildings, not only 

 for the exhibition of collections, but for the 

 storage of material now placed in temporary 



