Viewing page 419 of 488

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[preprinted]]
Smithsonian Institution   827
[[/preprinted]]

The Smithsonian Scientific Series was meeting with gratifying success and the Institution had already received substantial royalties amounting to about $28,000. from this source, which would increase as time passed. 

The increase in Government appropriations was gratifying, having gone from $1,070,000 in 1927 to $1,256,000 in 1929.  The new estimates are about $84,000 in excess of the last year's appropriations.

The Secretary then reminded the Board that General Dawes had given $10,000 for the purpose of historical studies in Spain, and that Dr. Charles Upson Clark, an expert, was not in that country and had already met with success in his researches, having discovered in the Vatican archives a richly illustrated lost manuscript of date 1552, dealing with Mexican medicinal botany.

After mentioning the rearrangement of the Museum Collections, and the establishment of the Division of Radiation and Organisms in the formerly useless Smithsonian North Tower and basement storage rooms, the Secretary asked Dr. Wetmore to speak of the various expeditions sent out by the Museum during the past six months.

Dr. Wetmore then gave a very interesting sketch of the work done by Museum specialists in various countries, covering nearly all the branches of the scientific work being conducted under the Museum program.

COMPULSORY RETIREMENT OF MEMBERS OF THE SMITHSONIAN STAFF

The Secretary reported to the Board on February 14, last, that in compliance with its resolution adopted at the Annual Meeting of December 13, 1928, he had prepared a bill designed to exempt under certain circumstances a number of the scientific staff of the Institution who, on August 20, 1930, by provision of law as expressed in a mandate of the Civil Service Commission (Circ. 60) must be compulsorily retired.  The bill had been introduced in the Senate 

[[initialed]] CGA [[/initialed]]