26 RErORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



The gallery will probably be open for exliibitlon to the public and to 

 students in art during the present year. The establishment of this col- 

 lection, as we have said in a i:)revious report, will obviate the neces- 

 sity of expending any of the funds of the Institution in supporting a 

 national gallery, and I would suggest that the same policy whicb has 

 directed the transfer of the library, the herbarium, and osteological 

 specimens to the National Library, the Agricultural Department, and 

 the Medical Museum, be also extended to the Corcoran Gallery. The 

 Institution has a number of pictures and a large collection of plaster 

 busts, which are scarcely in place in the midst of specimens of natural 

 history, but which would produce a better effect in connection with other 

 works of art of a similar character. There need be no danger as to 

 impoverishing the Institution by this liberal policy, since it is in reality 

 but another method of increasing its usefulness. 



Tbe saving which is made by transferring the keeping of the library 

 and botanical collections can scarcely be estimated at less than .$12,000 

 13er annum, a sum which adds to the efficiency of the Institution in the 

 way of increasing, by the exchange of its products, the collections of 

 objects of nature and art in the national capital, besides adding to the 

 intellectual wealth of the whole country. 



Museum, — During the past year the space occupied by the museum 

 has been enlarged by appropriating to it the portion of the building 

 known as the western connecting range, which consists of a room 61 

 feet long by 38 feet wide. On either side of this room has been erected 

 a row of (seven) upright cases, and in the middle a series of tables ex- 

 tending the whole length of the apartment. The upright cases on the 

 south side have been entirely filled with ethnological specimens from 

 China and Japan, comprising the presents from the governments of these 

 countries to the President of the United States. In the cases on the 

 north side is arranged a large and valuable collection of the dresses of 

 the Indians of the northwest coast and of the Esquimaux of North 

 America. The table cases are also filled with ethnological specimens, 

 among which are many exhibiting the rarer specimens of Indian work- 

 manship, and also those of prehistoric times, from the explored caverns 

 of France, presented by Professor Lartet. 



During the year 1869, 390 packages, containing many new specimens 

 and thousands of duplicates, have been received at the Institution, and 

 of these, as far as time would permit, a single choice series has been 

 selected for the museum ; the remainder are placed aside to be classified 

 and made up into labeled sets for distribution. In pursuing this policy, 

 to which the Institution is bound by its office of curator of the govern- 

 ment collections, it is impossible to restrict the increase of the museum, 

 and now, notwithstanding the great number of specimens that have 

 been given a\\ay, nearly the whole of the available space in the building- 

 is filled to overflowing. An appropriation for finishing the large hall in 



