18 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



In addition to the report of the Secretary, giving an account of the 

 operations, expenditures, &c, of the Institution, and the proceedings of 

 the Board of Regents to the 4th of April, 1872, the report for 1871 

 contains a memoir of Sir John Frederic William Hersckel, by K. S. Dodge, 

 esq. ; a eulogy on Joseph Fourier, by Arago ; an account of Prof. Thomas 

 Graham's scientific work, by William Odling; translations from the 

 German of a lecture on the relation of the physical sciences to science in 

 general, by Dr. Helmholtz ; a lecture on alternate generation and par- 

 thenogenesis in the animal kingdom, by Dr. G. A. Kornhuber ; a lecture 

 on the present state of our knowledge of cryptogamous plants, by Henry 

 William Eeichardt ; an original paper on the secular variations of the 

 planetary orbits, by John N. Stockwell, being an abstract of the elabor- 

 ate memoir published by the Institution in the Contributions to Knowl- 

 edge; an original article on methods of interpolation applicable to the 

 graduation of irregular series, such as fables of mortality, &c, by E. 

 L. DeForest; a translation of the transactions of the Society of Physics 

 and Natural History of Geneva from June, 1870, to June, 187L j the scien- 

 tific instructions to Captain Hall's north polar expedition; together 

 with a large number of articles on ethnology and meteorology. 



EXCHANGES. 



The labors of the Institution in promoting literary and scientific inter- 

 course between this country and other parts of the world have been 

 continued during the past year. The system of international exchanges 

 includes not only all the principal libraries and important societies, but 

 also a considerable number of the minor institutions of Europe. The 

 following table exhibits the number of establishments in each country 

 with which the Smithsonian is at present in correspondence : 



Sweden 20 



Norway s 22 



Iceland 2 



Denmark 27 



Russia 155 



Holland : 62 



Germany 588 



Switzerland 63 



Belgium 105 



France 229 



Italy 156 



Portugal 20 



Spain 11 



Great Britain and Ireland 336 



Greece 7 



Turkey 11 



Africa 19 



