1887.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 703 



The general aim of tbe Autliropological department of tbe National 

 Museum gives, however, to its Section of Graphic Arts a peculiar char- 

 acter. In museums of art, as tliese are usually understood, the results 

 alone of the artistic activities of man are shown, to the exclusion of the 

 appliances, tools, and materials used by the artist. In the JI. S. Na- 

 tional Museum, on the contrary, special stress is laid upon the material 

 or technical side of art, and its collections, therefore, embrace, or are 

 to embrace, not only drawings, paintings, and prints, but papers, can- 

 vases, pencils, brushes, colors, ])lates, gravers, printing inks, etc., as 

 well. Since the Section of Graphic Arts is, however, stiil in its infancy, 

 the scheme here outlined has so far been realized in it only in a very 

 fragmentary way, and it is, indeed, hardly to be expected that it will 

 ever be perfected, even if we leave out of the account the new discov- 

 eries made almost dail}', and which must necessarily keep it in a state 

 of continual growth. 



THE SCOPE OF THE PRESENT EXHIBITION. 



Of the vast field covered by the Section of Graphic Arts, only a part 

 is reiiresented in the present exhibition, the scope of which has been 

 limited so as to embrace only the processes employed in the making of 

 printable blocks and plates for pictorial puriioses, and these processes 

 again are shown in their results only ; that is to say, in the prints which 

 are their final products. Color-printing has also been purposely 

 omitted (except incidentally), as, properly treated, it is a subject in 

 itself suflicient for an extensive exhibition. 



Viewed in the abstract, the subject selected for elucidation and limited 

 as just stated, needs only two grand subdivisions — the first embrac- 

 ing all the older methods, involving only hand work or physical power, 

 at least to a predominating extent ; the second, all the modern processes 

 based upon the chemical action of light (photography), the aim of 

 which it has been from the beginning to eliminate more and more the 

 activity of the engraver, and even of the draughtsman, until nature has 

 finally been compelled to prepare her own portrait by the aid of the 

 sun's rays, and to place it into the hands of the printer ready for mul- 

 tiplication, without the help of an interpreter of any kind whatsoever. 

 To this simple arrangement the exhibition does not, however, conform. 

 It is divided into four parts of about equal extent, as follows : 

 I. The old processes, as above defined. — Cases 1 to 9 and screens 1 to 4; 

 189 numbers. 



