REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 29 



b} 7 the Institution or its branches. During the } 7 ear 10 meetings were 

 held and 93 manuscripts were passed upon. The membership of the 

 committee is as follows: Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, head curator of 

 biology, National Museum, chairman; Dr. George P. Merrill, head 

 curator of geology, National Museum ; Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, chief, 

 Bureau of American Ethnologj 7 ; Mr. N. Hollister, superintendent, 

 National Zoological Park : and Mr. W. P. True, editor of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, secretarj 7 . 



LIBRARY. 



The Smithsonian library received during the year 6,995 volumes 

 and pamphlets, distributed as follows: To the Smithsonian deposit 

 in the library of Congress, 4,019 ; to the Smithsonian office, Astro- 

 physical Observatory, and National Zoological Park libraries, 428; 

 and to the National Museum library, 2,548. 



Continued use of the library's collection of works on aeronautics 

 has been made by students of aeronautics, both of the United States 

 and of foreign countries. Forty titles were added to the collection 

 during the year. In the De Peyster collection, author cards have 

 been made for the Napoleon series and for the works on British, Ger- 

 man, and Italian history. 



The work of the library has suffered from the fact that the appro- 

 priation for binding has not kept pace with the greatly increased 

 cost. This has reduced the number of books bound during the year 

 to 737, as compared with 1,322 in 1919 and 1,706 in 1918. 



NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



The congressional appropriation for the maintenance of the 

 Museum has remained practically the same for many years, and as a 

 result of the great increase, both in size and importance, of the 

 collections, not only has it been impossible to undertake desirable 

 new lines of work, but also existing work has been greatly hampered 

 by the necessity of observing the strictest economy. The two most 

 serious handicaps to the Museum in extending its usefulness to the 

 people of the country are lack of space for proper exhibition of its 

 valuable collections and an insufficient staff of expert curators. This 

 last has in several cases necessitated grouping wholly unlike divi- 

 sions under one curator, with the result that the sections in which 

 there is no specialist in charge must remain practically at a stand- 

 still. 



In June, 1920, a small congressional appropriation made possible 

 the establishment of the National Gallery of Art as an independent 

 bureau under the administration of the Smithsonian Institution, in- 

 stead of being as previously a part of the Museum, the change to take 

 effect on July 1, 1920. Mr. W. H. Holmes, head curator of the 



