REPOET OF THE SECRETARY. 9 



students and others who may desire to consult them. These works, it 

 must be recollected, are not of a popular character, but require profound 

 study to fully understand them. They are, however, of immense impor- 

 tance to the teacher and the popular expounder of science. They con- 

 tain the materials from which general treatises on special subjects are 

 elaborated. 



Full sets of the publications cannot be given to all who apply for them, 

 since this will be impossible With the limited income of the Institution ; 

 and, indeed, if care be not exercised in the distribution, so large a portion 

 of the income will be annually expended on the distribution of what has 

 already been printed that nothing further can be done in the way of new 

 publications. It must be recollected that every addition to the list of 

 distribution not only involves the giving of publications which have 

 already been made but also of those which are to be made hereafter. 



At the commencement of the operations of the Institution the publi- 

 cations were not stereotyped, and consequently the earlier volumes have 

 now become scarce, especially the first, of which there are no copies for 

 distribution, although it can occasionally be obtained at a second-hand 

 book-store in some of the larger cities, the authors having been allowed 

 to strike off an edition to sell on their own account. 



No copyright has ever been taken for any of the publications of the 

 Institution. They are left free to be used by the compiler of books 

 without any restrictions except the one that full credit shall be given 

 to the name of Smithsonfor any extracts which may be made from them. 



The printing of the publications of the Institution almost since the 

 organization has been principally done at Philadelphia, by the house of 

 T. K. Collins, under the superintendence of Mr. J. W. Huff, whose accu- 

 racy and typographical skill leave us nothing to desire in this line. 

 The stereotype plates are all deposited in the fire-proof vault of the 

 basement of the Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia ; and to 

 this society the Institution has been indebted many years for the cour- 

 tesy of storing, free of cost, this valuable property. 



Publications in 1872. — During the past year the volume of Tables and 

 Results of the Precipitation in Rain and iSnoic in the United States and 

 at some stations in adjacent parts of North America, Central and South 

 America, has been printed and partly distributed. It consists of 178 

 quarto pages, with five plates and three charts. It contains the abstracts 

 of all the records of observations of the rain-fall which have been made 

 from the early settlement of this country down to the close of the year 

 1866, so far as they could be obtained. These records are from about 

 twelve hundred stations, and consist of the observations made under 

 the direction of the Institution, assisted since 1854 by the Patent-Office 

 and Department of Agriculture, of those of the Medical Department of 

 the United States Army, of those by the United States Survey of the 

 North and Northwest Lakes, of those made by the New York University 

 system, by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and also of those by 



