A LIST AND INDEX OF THE 



PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES 



NATIONAL MUSEUM (1875-1946) 



Compiled in the Editorial Division, Smithsonian 

 Institution 



PREFACE 



ONLY once before has there been issued a complete list, with index, of the 

 publications of the National Museum. This was entitled "A List of the 

 Publications of the United States National Museum (1875-1900)" and was 

 published in 1902 as U. S. National Museum Bulletin No. 51. It was com- 

 piled by Randolph I. Geare, chief of the Division of Correspondence and 

 Documents, and aggregated 168 printed pages. A supplement was issued four 

 years later, bringing the list through the year 1906. 



Forty years have thus elapsed, and it is therefore felt that the present 

 work is long overdue. Inasmuch as publication (i.e., the "diffusion of knowl- 

 edge") is one of the two prime functions of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 another complete list is especially appropriate this year (1946) when the 

 one-hundredth anniversary of the Institution's founding is being observed. 

 Since Bulletin 51 has long been out of print, the present list has been made 

 all-inclusive, covering the entire 71 -year span of Museum publication. 



The publications of the National Museum have appeared in five series 

 as follows: the Annual Reports, the Bulletins, the Proceedings, the Special 

 Bulletins, and the Circulars. The Reports previous to 1905 were large 

 volumes containing, in addition to the administrative reports, papers based 

 upon the Museum collections and upon its explorations and researches. 

 Examples of these are such monumental contributions as Donaldson's mono- 

 graph on the George Catlin Indian Gallery, Hornaday's "Extinction of the 

 American Bison," Goode's "The Museums of the Future," and Ridgway's 

 "The Humming Birds." Since 1905 tlie Reports have been without the sup- 

 plemental papers but have continued the lists of all the accessions received 

 each year by the Museum. 



The first of the Bulletins was issued in 1875. This series contains 

 separate publications of monographic proportions — systematic treatises, faunal 

 works, reports of expeditions, catalogs of type specimens and special collections 

 — and in all fields of the Museum's scientific work. To date, 193 Bulletins 

 have been issued, some of them in several volumes (as Nos. 47, 50, 71, 82, 

 100, 104). In this series also are included the Contributions from the United 

 States National Herbarium, now in their thirtieth volume, containing papers 

 relating to the botanical collections of the Museum. In all, therefore, the 

 Bulletin series aggregates nearly 300 separate volumes. 



Of the Proceedings, begun in 1878, 96 volumes have been published, 

 comprising a total of 3,204 separate papers. This series, for the most part, 



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