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452 —There are three distinct sets of publications issued as serials, directed by the Smithsonian Institution:

1. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, a quarto series begun in 1848, and comprising thirty-two volumes to date. In these volumes are placed the monographs, articles, and papers offering positive additions to human knowledge, either undertaken by agents of the Smithsonian Institution or by persons encouraged by. its assistance. These contributions correspond to the more elaborate memoirs of learned societies, and comprise treatises on anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, electricity, ethnology, geology, mathematics, meteorology, natural history, palæontology, physics, and zoölogy, in all their ramifications.

2. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, begun in 1862, thirty-five volumes, octavo. These contain bibliographies, tables, proceedings of Washington societies, and papers on scientific topics of value to scholars, yet not forming, as a rule, positive additions to the sum of human knowledge. These papers vary in size from a leaflet of four pages to a stout volume of twelve hundred pages. The individual articles are first issued independently, each receiving a number in course, and afterward they are bound up in volumes of suitable size, which themselves also bear numbers. This plan of publication also applies to the Contributions. The editorial work of this and the preceding series was long under the care of the late Mr. William B. Taylor, whose great erudition and skill in book-making proved invaluable to the institution.

3. Annual Reports of the Board of Regents—forty-nine volumes, octavo. These are submitted to Congress, in accordance with a clause in the act of incorporation. They contain the Journal of the Proceedings of the Board of Regents, the Report of the Executive Committee, the reports of the Secretary and of the directors, curators, or managers of the important departments controlled by the institution. In these reports are exhibited the financial affairs of the institution, its condition, its operations, and statistics of every kind connected with the same. Following the official part is a General Appendix containing a selection of memoirs of interest to collaborators and correspondents of the institution, teachers, and others engaged in the promotion of knowledge. These essays are generally reprints from divers sources, but they also include original translations and occasionally contributed articles. From 1880 to 1889 this General Appendix was chiefly devoted to an Annual Record of Scientific Progress prepared by specialists.

—By exchanging the publications of the institution for transactions of learned societies, and for productions of