REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1919. 11 



Nor has the elementary or even the higher education been by any 

 means the sole gainer from the work of the Museum. To advance 

 knowledge, to gradually extend the boundaries of learning, has been 

 one of the great tasks to which the Museum, in consonance with the 

 spirit of the Institution, has set itself from the first. Its staff, though 

 chiefly engaged in the duties incident to the care, classification, and 

 labeling of collections in order that they may be accessible to the 

 public and to students, has yet in these operations made important 

 discoveries in every department of the Museum's activities, which 

 have in turn been communicated to other scholars through its nu- 

 merous publications. But the collections have not been held for the 

 study of the staff nor for the scientific advancement of those belong- 

 ing to the establishment. Most freely have they been put at the dis- 

 posal of investigators connected with other institutions, without 

 whose help the record of scientific progress based upon the material 

 in the Museum would have been greatly curtailed. When it is pos- 

 sible to so arrange, the investigator comes to Washington ; otherwise 

 such collections as he needs are sent to him, whether he resides in this 

 country or abroad. In this manner practically every prominent 

 specialist throughout the world interested in the subjects here well 

 represented has had some use of the collections and thereby the Na- 

 tional Museum has come to be recognized as a conspicuous factor in 

 the advancement of knowledge wherever civilization has a foothold. 



