60 APPENDIX TO THE REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



would be erected by them for the Government board j or, if not, whether 

 space could be had in the main building. The board was informed, in 

 response, that it would be impossible to put up a special building, but 

 that space might be had in the general buildings of the Exhibition, pro- 

 vided the objects could be divided and classified according to the plan 

 adopted by the commission. This, however, would have involved the 

 separation of the various elements of the Government display and pre- 

 vented its exhibition as a whole, and it was finally concluded to erect a 

 building on ground assigned by the Centennial Commission, and in a 

 very excellent situation. 



After discussing the various plans for buildings submitted to the 

 board, contracts were entered into for the erection of an edifice to cover 

 102,000 square feet of surface, and the work being i)ut in hand, it has 

 been prosecuted so rapidly as to be now nearly completed. Of the 

 space in this building, 20,000 feet have been assigned to the Smithsonian 

 Institution and 0,000 feet to the United States Fish Commission. 



Plan of exhibition proposed by the Smithsonian Institution. — After a 

 careful consideration of the subject, it was concluded that the most suit- 

 able exhibition on the part of the Smithsonian Institution should em- 

 brace, in the first place, the history, condition, functions, workings, and 

 general results of the Institution itself; in the second, a display of the 

 mineral and animal resources, as well as of the ethnology, of the United 

 States, the Agricultural Department proposing to include the various 

 subjects connected with the vegetable kingdom in its division. As the 

 Interior Department desired to make a ver^' exhaustive exhibition of 

 everything relating to the Indian tribes of the United States, an arrange- 

 ment was made with the Indian Bureau by the Smithsonian Institution, 

 to join in a single display of the ethnology and archseology of the 

 United States, to be held in the space assigned to the Indian Depart- 

 ment and credited to the Indian Bureau. As the National Museum, in 

 charge of the Smithsonian Institution, already embraces very large col- 

 lections of this character, it was proposed to confine the action on the 

 part of the Indian Bureau to explorations, investigations, and collections 

 in those parts of the United States which were not already properly 

 represented. In this way any duplication would be avoided. 



The display of the United States Fish Commission, although named as 

 a separate division in the bill appropriating funds for the purpose of 

 exhibition, naturally belongs to that of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 and was arranged to form a special division of " the fisheries " in the 

 scheme already referred to ; so that finally five divisions were provided 

 for : first, the Smithsonian Institution ; second, the mineral wealth of 

 the United States; third, the animal resources; fouith, the fisheries; 

 and, fifth, the ethnology of the country. 



Progress of the icorlc. — I now proceed, in accordance with your instruc- 

 tions, to present some fuller details of the proposed exhibition, and an 

 account of what has been done in these several divisions. 



