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[[preprinted]]Smithsonian Institution 698[[/preprinted]]
ENDOWMENT MEETING.
The Acting Secretary stated that in deference to the wish of the late Secretary Walcott, expressed a few days before his death, and seconded by the wish of Mrs. Walcott, the conference authorized by the Regents at their last annual meeting would be held on February 11, as planned. A very interesting exhibit had been installed, calculated to show some of the researches which the Institution is uniquely qualified to undertake if sufficient financial means become available. The President of the United States and a notable group of eminent men had accepted the invitation of the Board to attend. Addresses would be given by the Chancellor and the Acting Secretary, in which the relations of the Institution to the Government, and its many-sided functions in the promotion of research and publication would be set forth. A fac-simile of the Will of James Smithson was to be presented to the conference. Copies were laid before the Regents.
WHAT IS THE "SMITHSONIAN"?
The Acting Secretary recalled to the Board that the Smithsonian Institution is a private foundation, the ward of the United States, engaged in many types of activities, international in scope and catholic in its attention to science; that under its initiative 9 bureaus of the Government had developed, of which 7 are still administered by the Institution as one type of its many activities. For these bureaus approximately a million dollars annually are appropriated by Congress. These appropriations have been greatly increased in recent years, so that while in 1922 the sum appropriated for them was $765,120.00, the present bill for the fiscal year 1928 carries $1,132,711.00.
Yet these increasingly liberal Governmental appropriations go not to support the Smithsonian Institution, but domestic bureaus under its admin- [[handwritten]]CMA[[/handwritten]]