REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. O 



committee reported $12,000; and in conference the amount as reported 

 by the House was agreed upon. 



In my last report I stated that it was desirable that the appropria- 

 tions for the Museum should be made under the direction of the Insti- 

 tution, and no longer under the Department of the Interior, and I gave 

 a correspondence with the honorable the Secretary of the Interior upon 

 the subject. I am happy to state that the Secretary's assent being 

 given the .appropriations were transferred by Congress to the care of the 

 Institution, and are now disbursed under direction of the Regents by 

 a disbursing clerk in tlie Institution, whose bonds have been accepted by 

 the Treasury Department. 



A detailed statement of the expenditures for the fiscal year 1889, 

 under appropriations for International Exchanges, North American 

 Ethnology, and the National Museum is given in the report of the Ex- 

 ecutive Committee. 



BUILDINGS. 



It will be remembered that the Board of Regents in their meeting 

 January 17, 1883, recommended to Congress the erection of a new 

 building idanued exclusively for museum purposes, and the steps taken 

 in pursuance of their instructions were laid before the Regents in my 

 last report, but I regret now to be unable to report any further progress. 



The necessity for additional space for the storage of collections, inde- 

 pendent of that demanded for exhibition purposes, is constantly be- 

 coming greater, while the assignment by the last Congress to the Fish 

 Commission of the principal parts of the rooms occupied by the Mu- 

 seum in the Armory building has still further aggravated the crowded 

 condition of the Museum exhibition halls and storage rooms, and I 

 deem it my duty again to urge the necessity of the erection of a new 

 building, if only for such requirements of storage as may be inferred 

 from the following statements : 



Since the erection of the present Museum building there have been 

 nearly 14,000 accessions to the Museum, chiefly by gifts, such "acces- 

 sions" representing frequently collections, and the collections including, 

 in many cases, thousands of specimens. From the year 1859 to 1880 

 the accessions numbered 8,475. It is thus evident that during the last 

 nine years the accessions have exceeded by more than 5,000 those of the 

 I)revious twenty-one years. 



Among the more recent collections are several of very great extent, 

 such as the bequest of the late Isaac Lea, of Philadelphia, which con- 

 tains 20,000 specimens of shells, besides minerals and other objects; 

 the Jeffries collection of fossil and recent shells of Europe, including 

 40,000 specimens ; the Stearns collection of moUusks, numbering 100,- 

 000 specimens; the Riley collection of insects, containing 150,000 speci- 

 mens; the Catlin collection of Indian paintings, about 500 in number; 

 the collection of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, for the 



