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Rh induces one to begin new work or to enter upon investigations which may result in important discoveries and valuable additions to human knowledge. So far as possible the income of the academy, which is now between forty and fifty thousand dollars a year from its own funds, is employed in subventions, to aid in printing important treatises, for travel, for excavations or special work. A brief reference to what has been accomplished will justify the demands of the friends of the academy for its establishment. It has provided for the publication of the 'Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticarum Rerum' in many volumes and of many volumes of reports of the excavations of the prehistoric commission for whose work it furnished the means. It has nearly completed the petrographic study of the central chain of the Eastern Alps, and has made a map of the region. In 1894 it joined in an international enterprise to discover the weight of the earth. In 1897 it sent, at a cost of more than 20,000 gulden, an expedition to Bombay to study the bubonic plague. Its bacillus was discovered, but the young man in charge of the expedition lost his life. In 1898 and 1899, it had a commission at work in southern Arabia, and on the island of Socotra. In 1897 it completed deep sea soundings in the Mediterranean, especially in what is called the Adriatic Sea. In 1899 it sent a double expedition to India to study meteors and the eclipse and in 1891 it sent a botanic expedition to Brazil. The results of all these expeditions and of others almost as important have been carefully edited and given to the world through the press.

In 1901 36 annual 'advertisers' had appeared and 49 'almanacs.' These were filled with information not elsewhere to be obtained. At that time the philosophical class had published 48 volumes of works prepared under its direction and 141 volumes of 'Proceedings.' The scientific class had published 68 volumes of special treatises and 108 volumes of 'Proceedings.' Five parts of the 'Report of the Prehistoric Commission' had also appeared. For twenty years and more monthly reports of the condition of chemistry in Europe and throughout the world have been printed and circulated. Of the 'Archives for Austrian History' 88 volumes have appeared, of the 'Sources (Fontes) for Austrian Affairs,' 8 volumes in the First Part, 51 in the Second Part; of 'Announcements from the National Archives,' 2 volumes, of the 'Monumenta Concilliorum,' 2 volumes, and 4 volumes of Part III. Of the 'Hapsburg Memorials,' divisions two and three of Vol. I. have been printed and one part of Vol. II. Ten volumes of the 'Tables of Codices' have appeared, three of the 'Venetian Dispatches' and the second division of Vol. II.

The Academy claims to have suggested and obtained the appointment of a committee to consider the sources of Indian lexicography; to investigate the condition of the Corpus Scriptorum of Oriental