Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/336

330 which for ten years has been chiefly devoted to the enlargement of Newton's work on the spectrum, and the National Zoological Park. The establishment of the latter was intended primarily to preserve the vanishing races of mammals on the North American continent; but it has also assumed the general features of a zoological park, affording the naturalist the opportunity to study the habits of animals at close range, the painter the possibility of delineating them, and giving pleasure and instruction to hundreds of thousands of the American people.

These two latter establishments are due to the initiative of the present secretary, Mr. S. P. Langley, elected in 1887; a physicist and astronomer, known for his researches on the sun, and more recently for his work in aerodynamics. While the fund has been increased of later years by a number of gifts and bequests, the most notable being that of Mr. Thomas G. Hodgkins of a sum somewhat over $200,000, its