REPORT ON NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



155 



have been mauy and great advances in metallurgy made in this country, and a com- 

 plete record of their development would be a valuable contribution to knowledge. It 

 is but just to say that, as a rule, American metallurgists have written and published 

 far more than their European brethren, but there is still room for improvement. The 

 majority of papers by American writers are scattered through various society-journals 

 and other periodicals, so that the student is obliged to waste a great deal of time in 

 tiresome search through a large amount of (to him) valueless matter, 



DEPARTMENT OF EXPLORATION AND FIELD WORK. 



The explorations which have been made, especially in the interest of 

 the National Museum have been, as hitherto, under the immediate di- 

 rection of the Smithsonian Institution, from whose funds the expenses 

 have been for the most part defrayed. The details are given at length in 

 the report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Various 

 officers of the Museum have been attached, especially during the summer 

 months, to the service of the United States Fish Commission, the Geo- 

 logical Survey, and the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, while others, more or less affiliated with the Museum, have been 

 engaged in field work incidentally in connection with their duties as 

 employees of the Coast Survey and the Signal Service of the Army. 



DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY. 



The chemical laboratory occupies the two upper stories of the south- 

 west pavilion, and the chemist, Mr. Frederick W . Taylor, has been 

 engaged in the solution of many questions in chemistry and economic 

 geology, proposed by the other departments of the Museum or by out- 

 side departments of the Government. The chemist rei^orts that, in an- 

 swer to letters received from the Director, he has made 119 reports, 15 

 being letters in response to queries submitted to the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution ; 70 being reports of qualitative analyses of specimens received 

 by the Institution, and identifying 93 specimens of minerals, rocks, and 

 ores. Thirty-four reports have been made representing 65 quantitative 

 auaylses, and involving 274 determinations. • 



One of the most interesting of the investigations was made for the 

 chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means for the purpose 

 of determining the possibility of extracting the methylic alcohol from 

 the ethyl alcohol contained in English methylated spirit. Another was 

 the analysis of eight samples of zinc-covered or galvanized-iron tele- 

 graph wire for the Signal Office of the War Department, the object 

 being to find some explanation of the different degrees of resistance to 

 an electric current exerted by the different wires. 



The main work of the laboratory has, however, been the examination 

 of questions in economic geology, involving the analyses of numerous 

 specimens of iron ore, coke, gold and silver ore, of natural brines, and 

 of soda incrustations from Nevada, the latter for the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey. 



