8 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



issues various publications through the National Museum and the 

 Bureau of Ethnology. 



Contributions to Knowledge. — No memoir of the Contributions to 

 Knowledge was completed during the present year, though two papers 

 now in type will be published early in the next fiscal year — one of these 

 is a memoir by Professor Morley on the densities of oxygen and 

 hydrogen, and the second a report by Drs. J. S. Billings, S. Weir 

 Mitchell and D. H. Bergey on investigations carried on by them, under 

 a grant from the Hodgkins fund, to determine the nature of supposed 

 poisonous properties of expired air. 



It was hoped that during the year two elaborate memoirs, on 

 "Oceanic ichthyology" and on "Life histories of North American 

 birds," mentioned in my last report, would be published, but they are 

 not yet completed, though they are entirely ready for press work. 



Miscellaneous Collections. — Five papers of this series were issued 

 during the year, besides separates of the several scientific papers con- 

 tained in the General Appendix of the Annual Keport. 



In connection with the system of meteorological observations estab- 

 lished by the Smithsonian Institution about 1850, a series of meteoro- 

 logical tables was compiled by Dr. Arnold Guyot, at the request of 

 Secretary Henry, and was published in 1852. A second edition was 

 issued in 1857, and a third edition, with further amendments, in 1859. 

 Though primarily designedfor meteorological observers reporting to the 

 Smithsonian Institution, the tables were so widely used by physicists 

 that, after twenty-five years of valuable service, the work was again 

 revised and a fourth edition was published in 1884. In a few years the 

 demand for the tables exhausted the edition, and it appeared to me 

 desirable to recast the work entirely, rather than to undertake its revi- 

 sion again. After careful consideration I decided to publish a new 

 work in three parts — Meteorological Tables, Geographical Tables, and 

 Physical Tables — each representative of the latest knowledge in its 

 field, and independent of the others, but the three forming a homo- 

 geneous series. Although thus historically related to Dr. Guyot's 

 Tables, the present work is so entirely changed with respect to mate- 

 rial, arrangement, and presentation that it is not a fifth edition of the 

 older tables, but essentially a new publication. 



The first volume of the new series of Smithsonian Tables (the Meteor- 

 ological Tables) appeared in 1893, and so great has been the demand 

 for it that a second edition has already become necessary. The second 

 volume of the series (the Geographical Tables) was published during 

 this year. It was prepared by Prof. E. S. Woodward, formerly of the 

 United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, but now of Columbia Col- 

 lege, New York. 



The manuscript of the Physical Tables, prepared by Prof. Thomas 

 Gray, has been sent to the printer and some progress made toward its 

 publication. This work will form the third volume of Smithsonian 

 Tables. 



