citizens, until now the value of the material already assembled is estimated at several million dollars. The gallery has never had any funds for the purchase of pictures until recently, when a liberal private fund has become available. The will of the late Henry Ward Ranger provides that the interest on the sum of $200,000 shall be used for the purchase of works of art which may ultimately come to the National Gallery. A number of valuable paintings have already been purchased from this fund.

Two other agencies which will do much toward building up the National Gallery are the National Portrait Committee, which secured for the gallery the portraits of many of the distinguished leaders of America and the Allies in the World War, and the National Gallery of Art Commission, whose functions are " to promote the administration, development, and utilization of the National Gallery of Art, including the acquisition of material of high quality representing the fine arts and the study of the best methods of exhibiting material to the public and its utilization for instruction."

An illustrated catalogue of the present collection was in preparation and nearly ready for the press at the close of the year. A start was made, also, during the year toward the building up of an art library. The income from a bequest to the Smithsonian Institution by the Rev. Bruce Hughes, of Lebanon, Pa., will be used for the purchase of reference works on art which will serve as a permanent memorial to the donor.

FREER GALLERY OF ART.

In the first report on the Freer Gallery of Art (Appendix 3 of this report), the curator, Mr. J. E. Lodge, gives a list indicating the nature and number of objects in the Freer collection, all of which had been received at the Freer Building by November, 1920. Art works of various kinds from the following sources are included in the collection: American, Babylonian, Byzantine, Cambodian, Chinese, Cypriote, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Near Eastern and East Indian, Palmyran, and Tibetan. The total number of art objects, including a small amount of unclassified material, is 9,566.

During the past year, the collection was unpacked and the objects placed in their respective storage spaces. The Japanese pottery and Chinese paintings were classified, and the task of checking and cataloguing the entire collection was begun. The interior fittings of the building were completed during the year, with the exception of a few minor items, and in June the Institution formally accepted the building from the architect, Mr. Charles A. Platt.

The plan of installation is first to catalogue and arrange the collections in the storage rooms so that they will be accessible for study, then to select objects for exhibition, and finally to arrange the public exhibits. This method delays the opening of the building to the public, but in the long run of years it will make the collection more valuable for purposes of study and exhibition, and will assure a far more accurate record of every object. Such an art gallery as this will exert its influence for centuries, and a year of delay in the beginning will not materially decrease its usefulness.

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY.

The Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology calls attention to the desirability of increasing the membership of the staff in order to meet the requirements of modern ethnological research. The service that the bureau should render to the state is somewhat different from what it was when the bureau was organized by Major Powell, its director. American ethnology of the future, having passed its descriptive stage, will demand a synthetic comparative treatment of the vast mass of facts accumulated in the last 25 years. There is an urgent call for generalizations that will be immediately useful to the community; and as there is an ever-growing interest in the history of the Indians, the future of this science lies along the line of the historical development and appreciation of prehistoric culture.

Nature has made the Rocky Mountains a vacation ground for the people of this country who love mountain scenery, and parks and monuments containing natural attractions are being set aside by presidential proclamation and placed under the direction of the Department of the Interior. One line of usefulness that ethnology can follow is to turn the minds of our people to the educational value of this area.

The aim of the chief during the year has been to cover as fully as possible with the funds available the comprehensive fields of the ethnology and archeology of the American Indian. This plan embraces the many aspects of the cultural life of the Indians, their languages, dwellings, social and religious customs, music, mythology, and ritual. In many cases it is urgent that this valuable material be recorded immediately, as certain of the tribes are rapidly approaching extinction. It is the purpose of the chief to increase as much as possible the field-work of the bureau, especially in the branch of archeology, which is becoming more and more popular as shown by the increasing demand for publications on this subject. Researches were carried on during the year on the Algonquian In

dians, the Iroquois, various members of the Muskhogean stock, Kiowa, Pueblo, Osage, Pawnee, and others. Archeological explorations were conducted in Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Colorado, New Mexico, and the Hawaiian Islands.

Successful archeological field-work was accomplished by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes on the Mesa Verde National Park, Colo. An extremely interesting ruin on which work was begun during the previous year was completely excavated and repaired. Owing to its undoubted use in connection with the worship of fire by the Indians, it was named Fire Temple. In Tennessee a number of prehistoric mounds were excavated which yielded interesting and valuable data on the Indians of that region, and similar work was conducted in Texas under the auspices of the bureau. Researches on Indian music were continued by Miss Densmore, the music of the Papago being studied this year.

INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES.

The work of the exchange service was greatly increased during the past year owing to the resumption of exchange relations with Germany. The total number of packages of publications handled during the year was 451,471, an increase of 82,099 over the total for the preceding year. The weight of this material was 605,312 pounds, an increase of 108,934 pounds.

During the year exchanges of publications were inaugurated with the Czechoslovak Republic and with the Polish Government. Exchange relations will be established with Roumania and Jugoslavia as soon as transportation and other facilities are sufficiently stabilized.

To the list of countries receiving full sets of United States Government documents there was added the Government of Poland, making a total of 57 foreign depositories, while to the list receiving partial sets were added Latvia and the Library of the League of Nations at Geneva, bringing the total number of partial sets up to 39.

As an example of the value of the exchange service in securing special series of publications in this country for establishments abroad, a set of publications which would tend to make the United States better known in Belgium was obtained from the various Government bureaus in this country and forwarded to the Société Belge d'Études et d'Expansion, at Liege, at their request.

NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK.

That the National Zoological Park is becoming more and more valuable to the people of Washington and out-of-town visitors from all parts of the country as a source of recreation and natural history

instruction is evident from the fact that the record of attendance has again been broken during the past year. The previous year's visitors numbered 2,220,605, which figure was this year exceeded by 171,232, making a total of 2,400,837. One hundred and twenty-four schools and classes, numbering 13,629 individuals, visited the park during the year for instruction purposes. The number of animals exhibited to the public is greater than at any time since 1912, while the number of species represented in the collection is greater than ever before. The scientific importance and monetary value of the collection also are much greater than in any previous year. Gifts of animals during the year numbered 178, including many rare and valuable specimens. Mr. Isaac Ellison, of Singapore, presented the park with a male orang-utan, the first of these interesting animals to be shown for many years. Mr. Victor J. Evans, of Washington, continued his previous generosity to the park by presenting a young Kadiak bear, a pair of birds of paradise, a species never before shown here, and some valuable parrots. A full list of the animals presented and their donors is given in the full report on the Park, Appendix 6. Many valuable specimens were also secured by exchange and transfer, and a few by purchase. The total number of animals in the collection on June 30, 1921, was 1,545, representing 478 species, an increase over the year before of 118 individuals and 59 species.

Owing to a drop toward the end of the year in the cost of food for the animals, it was possible to undertake a few much-needed and long-deferred improvements. Sections of roads were rebuilt and repaired, one of the fords across Rock Creek was rebuilt with cement, a sidewalk was laid from the much-used Harvard Street entrance, the great flight cage for birds was scraped and painted, and several minor improvements were completed. With the aid of a small sawmill, 140,000 feet of lumber and 80,000 shingles were salvaged from dead chestnut trees in the park.

The purchase of land necessary for the protection of the Connecticut Avenue entrance, mentioned in several previous reports, was completed during the year, and a small unexpended balance of the money available for this purpose was reappropriated for the purchase of certain much-needed lots near the Adams Mill Road entrance.

The most urgent needs of the park are a suitable public restaurant building, a building for the exhibition of small mammals, and funds for the completion of grading and filling operations, which would provide a large area of flat space for deer and other animals, and would make possible the elimination of a dangerous curve in the main automobile road.

ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY.

The most important event during the year was the location of a new solar observing station on Mount Harqua Hala, Ariz., probably the most cloudless region in the United States. This station, which was erected through the generosity of Mr. John A. Roebling, of New Jersey, will be used for the purpose of securing solar-constant observations on all possible days for several years, which it is hoped will furnish, in conjunction with similar observations to be made at the Smithsonian station at Montezuma, Chile, a sound basis for the study of the relation between solar variation and our weather conditions on the earth.

At Washington the preparation of Volume IV of the Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory, mentioned in last year's report, was brought nearly to completion. A large amount of delicate instrument work was carried out at the observatory instrument shop, and Doctor Abbot was invited by Doctor Hale, of the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, to prepare a special spectrobolometer to observe the energy spectra of the stars. This extremely delicate apparatus was nearly completed at the close of the year.

In the field the usual solar observations were conducted at Mount Wilson, Calif.; Montezuma, Chile; and at the new station in Arizona. At Mount Wilson Dr. Abbot and Mr. Aldrich also carried on observations on the distribution of radiation over the sun's disk, and various investigations with the pyrheliometer, the spectrobolometer, the pyranometer, and the Ångström pyrgéometer. The solar cooker, on which Dr. Abbot has been working for several seasons, was brought to perfection, and practically all the cooking operations required by the observers were performed with the apparatus.

At the new Arizona station observing was begun about the middle of September, and from then until February conditions were even better than had been hoped for. It was possible to make observations on about 70 per cent of the days during that period. March, April, and May were less satisfactory, but this was apparently due to the unusual character of the weather all over the world, and it is confidently hoped that continued observations of the sun here and at the Chile station will lead to important results bearing on weather prediction on the earth.

INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

This international cooperative enterprise has been in existence since 1900, having as its object the systematic indexing and classifying of all original scientific publications. Beginning with the litera

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