REPORT OP THE SECRETARY. 41 



participation in war activities; for a second liberty loan meeting 

 of Post Office Department employees ; for two exhibitions of motion 

 pictures relating to Army aeronautics for the Signal Corps of the 

 United States Army; for a three-day school of instruction in the 

 furtherance of the work of the United States Food Administration; 

 and for lectures, on two occasions under the auspices of the National 

 Council of Women, on one under the District of Columbia Chapter 

 of the American Red Cross, and another under the Women's Liberty 

 Loan Committee. 



Before the auditorium was turned over to the Bureau of War Risk 

 Insurance, that bureau frequently made use of it for instructing and 

 organizing the field parties of officers and enlisted men who were to 

 be sent to the various camps to attend to the details relating to the 

 issuance of life insurance. 



For two days the auditorium was given over to the annual meeting 

 of the Potato Association of America, and the Bureau of Commercial 

 Economics made use of it three times showing motion pictures of the 

 war, to Army officers, on the first two occasions, and to members of 

 the National Council of Defense on the last. 



Besides the reception to the American Public Health Association 

 on the evening of October 18, there was a reception in the National 

 Gallery of Art on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition of 

 lithographs of war work by Joseph Pennell on the evening of No- 

 vember 1. v 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Over 8,000 duplicate specimens, included in 8 regular sets of mol- 

 lusks, 5 regular sets of fossil invertebrates, and a number of special 

 sets, were distributed to schools and colleges. Exchanges for secur- 

 ing additions to the collections involved the use of about 23,227 dupli- 

 cates, while more than 11,000 specimens, chiefly botanical and zoologi- 

 cal, were lent to specialists for study. 



The attendance of visitors at the natural history building aggre- 

 gated 306,003 persons for week days and 95,097 for Sundays, being a 

 daily average of 977 for the former and 1,828 for the latter. At the 

 arts and industries building and the Smithsonian building, which are 

 open only on week days, the totals were, respectively, 161,298 and 

 67,224, and the daily averages 515 and 214. 



The publications of the year consisted of the annual report, one 

 volume of proceedings, one volume of the contributions from the 

 National Herbarium, and three bulletins, besides 40 separate papers. 

 The latter comprised 28 from the proceedings, 4 from the contribu- 

 tions, 7 parts of bulletins, and a catalogue of a special loan collection 

 in the National Gallery of Art. 



