8 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1919. 



thus stamping the Museum at the very outset as one of the widest 

 range and at the same time as the Museum of the United States. It 

 was also appreciated that additions would be necessary to the col- 

 lections then in existence, and provision was made for their increase 

 by the exchange of duplicate specimens, by donations, and by other 

 means. 



If the wisdom of Congress m so fully providing for a museum in 

 the Smithsonian law challenges attention, the interpretation put 

 upon this law by the Board of E«gents within less than six months 

 from the passage of the act can not but command admiration. In 

 the early part of September, 1846, the Regents took steps toward 

 formulating a plan of operations. The report of the committee 

 appointed for this purpose, submitted in December and January 

 following, shows a thorough consideration of the subject in both the 

 spirit and letter of the law. It would seem not out of place to cite 

 here the first pronouncement of the board with reference to the char- 

 acter of the Museum : 



" In obedience to the requirements of the charter,^ which leaves 

 little discretion in regard to the extent of accommodations to be 

 provided, your committee recommend that there be included in the 

 building a museum of liberal size, fitted up to receive the collections 

 destined for the Institution. * * * 



"As important as the cabmets of natural history by the charter 

 required to be included in the Museum, your committee regard its 

 ethnological portion, including all collections that may supply items 

 in the physical history of our species, and illustrate the manners, 

 customs, religions, and progressive advance of the various nations of 

 the world ; as, for example, collections of skulls, skeletons, portraits, 

 dresses, implements, weapons, idols, antiquities, of the various races 

 of man. * * * in this connexion your committee recommend 

 the passage of resolutions asking the cooperation of certain public 

 functionaries and of the public generally in furtherance of the above 

 objects. 



"Your committee are further of opinion that in the Museum, if 

 the funds of the Institution permit, might judiciously be included 

 various series of models illustrating the progress of some of the most 

 useful inventions; such, for example, as the steam engine from its 

 earliest and rudest form to its present most improved state ; but this 

 they propose only so far as it may not encroach on ground already 

 covered by the numerous models in tlie Patent Office, 



" Specimens of staple materials, of their gradual manufacture, and 

 of the finished product of manufactures and the arts may also, your 

 committee think, be usefully introduced. This would supply oppor- 



1 Since the Institution was not chartered in a legal sense, but established by Congress, 

 the use of the word " charter " in this connection was not correct. 



