every great muscum. them all.

The National Museum endeavors to promote

It is a museum of record, in which are preserved the material foundations of an enormous amount of scientific knowledge, the types of numerous past investigations. This is especially the case with those materials that have served as a foundation for the reports upon the resources of the United States.

It is a museum of research, which aims to make its contents serve in the highest degree as a stimulus to inquiry and a foundation for scientific investigation. Research is necessary in order to identify and group the objects in the most philosophical and instructive relations, and its officers are therefore selected for their ability as investigators, as well as their trustworthiness as custodians.

It is an educational museum, through its policy of illustrating by specimens every kind of natural object and every manifestation of human thought and activity, of displaying descriptive labels adapted to the popular mind, and of distributing its publications and its named series of duplicates.

The collections are installed, in part, in the Smithsonian building and, in part, in the large building adjacent, covering 3 acres of ground, which was erected in 1881 to afford temporary accomodations for the overflow until such time as an adequate new building could be constructed.

The following table shows the number of specimens in the various departments of the Museum June 30, 1894, and June 30, 1895:

a No estimate of the number of specimens in the duplicate series can be given at this time. b In addition there is a large quantity of material in storage. eThese figures include the duplicates, which are estimated at 12,000.

The intrinsic value of such collections as these can not well be expressed in figures. There are single specimens worth hundreds, others worth thousands, of dollars, and still others which are unique and priceless. Many series of specimens which owe their value to their completeness and to the labor which has been expended on them can not be replaced at any price. The collections at a forced sale would realize more than has been expended on them, and a fair appraisal of their value would amount to several millions of dollars.

In the direct purchase of specimens but little money has been spent, less, perhaps, in fifty years than either France, England, Germany, or Austria expends in a single year on similar objects. The entire Museum is the outgrowth of Government expeditions and expositions, and of the gifts prompted by the generosity of the American people.

If there were more space it would be possible to devote a special hall to the collections illustrating the life of the races of the far Norththe Eskimos and their kin. A large hall might be filled with the wonderful groups of models of the races of mankind, and particularly of the different tribes of the North American Indians, clothed in their characteristic costumes and engaged in the arts and occupations peculiar to each. These groups are recognized in Europe as having no equal, and are now temporarily placed in the lecture room and in various out-of-the-way corners, where their effect and usefulness are largely lost. No other museum in the world has such rich material in this field, but at present only a small number of exhibition cases can be

devoted to them, and the remainder of the material is stowed away in drawers and packing boxes.

The magnificent mounted groups of the larger animals of America, unsurpassed by anything of the kind in the world, are now so crowded together in the midst of other collections that they are scarcely visible, and some of which are packed away.

A considerable portion of the collection of the great fossil vertebrate animals of North America, of which there is a magnificent series, is now stored in the basement of the museum at Yale College for lack of room to receive it here, although it is much needed by the geologists of the Geological Survey for purposes of study.

Another hall is needed which might well be devoted to economic geology, illustrating the wonderful material wealth of our country and its utilization; and still another is needed to illustrate the material resources of the country, classified by States. With the present accommodations the materials and ores of each State are confined to one or two small cases. A hall of proper extent, arranged upon this geographical plan, would be one of the most impressive displays of the kind to be seen anywhere in the world.

The building devoted especially to the Museum was erected after the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, as a temporary accommodation for the collections given to the United States by the foreign governments and private exhibitors represented on that occasion. It is the cheapest public building of a permanent character ever erected, having cost only $2.25 a square foot of floor space available for exhibition. The museum buildings in Central Park, New York, have cost from $30 to $40 a square foot.

The building in Washington has served a good purpose, but is deficient in one of the most important particulars; it has no cellars whatever, and very little provision for workshops and laboratories. In consequence of this it has been necessary to use all kinds of devices for storing material which can not be exhibited in the exhibition halls in the bases under the exhibition cases, in small recesses, so ingeniously contrived that their presence is not suspected. It has been necessary to do this, but the result has been to still further increase the crowded condition.

Another disagreeable result is that much noisy work has to be done in the Museum halls in spaces shut off from the public by screens, and that when preparations for exhibitions or unpacking are going on, not only are a portion of the collections closed to the public, but there is a constant and unpleasant noise of hammers.

A temporary relief was secured some years ago by placing the great herbarium, one of the most important collections of American plants in the world, in the custody of the Agricultural Department; but last year the Secretary of Agriculture found himself unable to longer give

these collections houseroom; and since the building in which they were kept is not fireproof, and the destruction of the collection would be an incalculable loss to science, there was nothing to do but to receive this, and up to the present time a considerable portion of the collection still remains in danger of destruction by fire, at the Department of Agriculture.

There is also a large amount of other material which ought to be arranged for public exhibition in a fireproof building which is now in the inflammable wooden structure adjoining the Department of Agriculture, and which the Secretary is desirous of transferring if accommodation can be found for it.

All the collections of the Geological Survey are stored in this building, and a considerable number of the scientific experts employed by the Survey have office room and accommodations to enable them to study in the Museum building. These accommodations have become absolutely inadequate, and there is no more room to receive the collections which the Director of the Survey deems absolutely necessary to have here in Washington in connection with his investigations of the material wealth of the country.

The crowded condition of the exhibition halls has been dwelt upon, but that of the storage rooms is still more congested. In the basement of the old Smithsonian building; in its towers, and in various small rooms about the new building, there is a space equivalent to perhaps 200,000 cubic feet, crowded to its utmost capacity with boxed material. This material is all carefully recorded, and the location and contents of every box is definitely fixed, so that when necessary any desired object can be referred to; but satisfactory use of the collections is impossible. In one basement room, for instance, are crowded 50,000 skins of birds, and 50,000 in an adjacent gallery, altogether twelve times as many as are shown in the exhibition hall. So closely are they crowded that it is impossible even to rearrange them, and their study is attended with great difficulty. It is desired to separate from among these the duplicates for distribution to the colleges and schools throughout the country, and an attempt has been made to accomplish this, but it has been found practically impossible.

The great collection of alcoholic fishes (the result in part of the explorations of the Fish Commission), the most extensive in America and one of the most extensive in the world, is stored in two basement rooms and only accessible with the greatest difficulty. Furthermore, the crowding of such a mass of alcoholic material in a small space is very dangerous, and in case of fire would lead to disastrous results. Properly equipped museums, like the British Museum in London, have a special fireproof building for collections of this kind, separate from other buildings, and provided with special devices for the prevention of fire.

In addition to the storage within the fireproof buildings there are a number of sheds whose capacity is roughly estimated at 170,000 cubic feet, which are packed with valuable material, and in which most of the workshops are placed. Two of these are immediately south of the Smithsonian building, another at the southeast corner of the Museum building, two others to the southwest of the old Armory building, and another, temporarily hired, halfway between the Museum and the Capitol. Until 1888 two floors of the old Armory building were used for the storage of Museum material. It then became necessary to give up one floor to accommodate the increasing necessities of the Fish Commission, and in 1894 to give it up entirely to the Commission. At that time an appropriation was made to rent storage rooms in the city. Suitable storage rooms can not be rented; we have had to move twice and are now being forced to a third move. These moves are destructive and expensive.

The two sheds adjoining the Armory building are getting old and some of the timbers are rotting away. They can not be repaired because there is no place to put the material they contain while the work is being done, and they are so crowded that temporary readjustments for this purpose are not possible.

All of the wooden storage sheds are in constant danger from destruction by fire. This is a matter especially serious in connection with two long sheds near the Smithsonian building. In his report to the Regents, presented to Congress in 1894, Secretary Langley made an earnest appeal for relief in the following words:

I have the assurance of experts that a fire communicated to these rooms would sweep through the entire length of the building, and although the building itself is fireproof as against any ordinary danger, it may well be doubted whether any of the collections therein exhibited can be regarded as safe if the rooms immediately below should be exposed to so peculiarly severe a conflagration as would be caused by the ignition of these large quantities of inflammable material. Besides this, these wooden sheds, which (as I have already intimated) are used not only for storerooms, but for workshops, for the preservation of specimens, and also as sheds for the carpenters, are likewise liable to cause serious losses should a fire be kindled in any of them, and all of these, I repeat, are immediately under the windows of the Smithsonian building.

In a report recently submitted by one of the inspectors of the Association of Fire Underwriters, in response to a request from me for a statement as to what insurance rates would be fixed upon the sheds in question, the Smithsonian building is referred to as an undesirable risk, owing solely to the presence of all this inflammable material underneath and in the adjoining sheds, on which latter insurance can not be placed for less than $40 per $1,000. This is, I am informed, nearly ten times the rate which would be charged on an ordinary warehouse. The chief danger, however, is not to the sheds themselves or their contents, but to the adjoining collections, which, without reference to their scientific interest but merely to their intrinsic value, represent a very large sum of money.

The result of all this crowding and lack of facility for work is that what is accomplished for public education by the Museum requires