126 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 



vert this Institution into a museum, and that without any legislation 

 whatever, by merely omitting to make an annual appropriation. For, 

 without taking into account the vast Centennial gifts of foreign countries, 

 the collections will now more than till the Smithsonian building, and 

 their care and exhibition would absorb its whole income. 



We are therefore bound to conclude that the Board of Regents, as re- 

 spects these national collections, acts as the trustee of Congress. Under 

 this state of things, and in view of the ever-increasing magnitude and 

 interest of these collections, the relation of this Institution to the 

 National Museum becomes a matter for grave consideration. 



In contemplating it we should be mindful of a policy which the Re- 

 gents have pursued of economizing the means and energies of the Insti- 

 tution by doing all it can through others ; by taking up no line of use- 

 fulness, however inviting, which is otherwise provided for, and even 

 relinquishing important fields upon which it had entered, whenever 

 other agencies were at work in them and were found adequate to occupy 

 them. Thus the important field of meteorology, upon which, at the 

 outset, the Institution systematically entered, was surrendered to the 

 Signal Bureau, which Congress has enabled to cover the ground. To 

 avoid needless duplication of books and librarians, it has consolidated 

 its library with that of Congress, and contributes to the latter the com 

 plete series of transactions of learned societies, journals, and other pub- 

 lications which it receives by exchange, or from time to time may pur- 

 chase, not parting, however, with the right of property, and thus con 

 tinuiug to fulfil, according to its best judgment, the duty of making 

 provision "for the gradual formation of a library composed of valuable 

 works pertaining to all departments of human knowledge." So also 

 when Mr. Corcoran founded a gallery of art, and endowed it with 

 double the amount of the original Smithsonian fund, our unimportant 

 collections in that department were contributed to it, and the Institution 

 may now fairly hold itself absolved from the duty of maintaining - "a 

 gallery of art." 



Our Secretary, iu his annual report submitted on the L'Gth of January, 

 1876, has now raised the grave question whether the well-being of the 

 Institution would not favor or even require the adoption of a similar 

 policy as regards the National Museum. He declares that it is most 

 " desirable that a more definite distinction between the two establish- 

 ments, if not an entire separation, should be made," and he urges the 

 subject upon our attention by considerations which cannot be disre- 

 garded. 



Your committee was appointed to take thought upon this subject. 

 The vast increase of museum objects in natural history, ethnology, and 

 materials of industrial art, consequent upon the Centennial Exposition, 

 an Increase Ear beyond the largest anticipations, gives new importance 

 and urgency to this question. 



A favorable action by the present Congress upon the suggestion made 



