Science: Smithsonian’s Year

James Smithson was the illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland, third creation. His mother was a lineal descendant of Henry VII. Despite so much blue blood, the bar sinister seared James Smithson all his life. A cultured, studious bachelor fond of science and travel, he might logically have left his money to Britain’s venerable Royal Society. However, according to the great U. S. naturalist, Louis Agassiz, his feelings were hurt when the Royal Society failed to publish some papers which he submitted. Therefore, his will directed that if his nephew should die childless, his fortune (much of which came to him from a halfbrother) should go “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase anddiffusion of knowledge among men.”

The Smithsonian Institution was created by Act of Congress in 1846. Last August it observed its goth birthday, received congratulations from its presiding officer ex officio, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Last week its gaunt, assiduous Secretary Charles Greeley Abbot published his annual report for fiscal 1935, which furnished a good picture of the multitudinous doings in one year of the ramified organization whose headquarters are in an old red sandstone castle on a broad lawn off Constitution Avenue.

The Smithsonian administers the U. S. National Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, the Bureau of American Ethnology, the National Zoological Park, a group of astrophysical observatories, a laboratory for studying the effect of radiation on organisms, a service which officially exchanges governmental and scientific documents with foreign countries. The National Museum comprises two buildings close by the Institution. Here many of Roosevelt I’s African hunting trophies are realistically mounted. The Smithsonian building itself is the nation’s inexhaustibly interesting attic, whose cherished and heterogeneous knick-knacks include Lindbergh’s transatlantic plane and General Custer’s sword and scabbard.

James Smithson’s original bequest amounted to $508,318.46. Other endow ments, increase of investment values, savings from income, etc. have swelled this hoard to $1,808,000. In 1919 the will of Charles L. Freer of Detroit provided nearly $2,000,000 to manage the art collections which he had already donated and housed next door to the Institution head quarters. This has increased to $4,770,000 bringing the total of the Smithsonian’s investments to $6,577,000. Of this, $1,000,000 is deposited in the Treasury and draws 6% by law; the rest is in stocks, bonds, mortgages, bank accounts. At year’s end there was a cash balance of some $580,000. These are the Smithsonian’s private finances. Although last week’s report complained again & again of insufficient Federal aid, the year’s appropriations for the National Museumwere $716,000, up $61,000 from the preceding year. In addition, PWA allotted $680,000to build a pachyderm house, an addition to the bird house and a house for small mammals for the zoo in Rock Creek Park.

In a paragraph headed “Outstanding Events,” Dr. Abbot did not fail to give prominent mention in last week’s report to his studies of solar radiation and terrestrial weather. Long and laborious research has convinced him that world weather tends to repeat itself in 23-year cycles, which he finds not only in longtime weather records but in tree rings, Great Lakes water levels, sediment laid down by ancient glaciers, annual catches of cod and mackerel. Temperature and precipitation forecasts for 1934 in 30 U. S. cities made on the basis of the Abbot cycle turned out, he declared, two-thirds correct.

The Smithsonian has a new sun-observing station on Mount St. Katherine in Egypt, where work will continue at least through 1937 on funds donated by John August Roebling, bridge-building scion. First analysis of the Egyptian records showed them equal in excellence to those of the Smithsonian’s two older sun stations at Montezuma, Chile and Table Mountain, Calif.

During the year the National Museum acquired 296,468 new items. Among these were the trophy awarded in the first Vanderbilt Cup Race 30 years ago, presented by William K. Vanderbilt; the sailplane Falcon, presented by the widow of Sportsman Warren Edwin Eaton (TIME, Dec. 10, 1934); a Maybach dirigible engine; a Mergenthaler linotype; a model of the locomotive De Witt Clinton and train; 108 new textiles; 136 coins; 1,314 stamps. Dancer Sally Rand did not send in her fans, as she has promised to do eventually. Nor was the Wright Brothers’ plane forthcoming from London, whither Orville Wright, angered by what he considered humiliations at home, sent it—and whence Secretary Abbot has been trying to retrieve it by tactful negotiation.

Despite small appropriations, the Smithsonian was enabled by generous outside help, WPA allotments and grants from its own income to send out 20 expeditions, up seven from the preceding year. Some of these trips were very economical. To collect butterflies in Virginia, for example, a scientist requires little besides railroad fare and a net. One or two scientists collected material from the yachts of wealthy kudos-loving sportsmen. Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts Jr. revisited the Folsom deposits, oldest known site of human culture in the U. S. (about 20,000 years old). In Colorado he found one of the grooved Folsom arrow points actually imbedded in the vertebra of an extinct bison. Miss Frances Densmore continued recording Indian music, and Dr. J. R. Swanton pursued the route of Hernando de Soto through Georgia and South Carolina.

During the year, two honorary staff members and seven active Smithsonian workers died. Mrs. Rachel Turner, charwoman, was retired for age.

Objects acquired by the National Gallery included portraits of General & Mrs. William Tecumseh Sherman and a bronze entitled Panther Surprising Civet Cat. During the year 130,323 Freer gallery visitors went in by the front entrance. Twenty-three very special people went in by the South Entrance on Mondays, on which day the gallery is closed to the public.

Births, deaths, purchases, gifts and exchanges left a total of 2,170 animals in the National Zoological Park. Donations included a serval and a caracal from President Roosevelt; from Russell L. Arundel, a bushmaster; from Dr. Fofo Mezitis, two little green herons; from Robert H. Lake, a woodchuck; from J. C. Johnson, a skunk; from Mrs. L. C. Vogt, of Alexandria, Va., a canary.