REPORT OF ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 



27 



.SPECIAL ASSKMBLAGE— CIIKONOUxaCAL, CYCLOPEOtCAL, COMPARA'llVK. 



There are iuuumerable subjects covering limited portions of the 

 anthropological field that call for special elaboration and separate 

 assemblage of materials. The history of a single nation may be thus 

 treated, as, for example, the history of the United States, a most 

 approi>riate subject for our National Museum; the history of France, 

 ai)propriate to a French museum, the order of pi'esentatiou being chron- 

 ological. An elaborate assemblage of exhibits may be nnide for cyclo- 

 pedical or reference use merely, as in the case of our former section of 

 materia medica, but this method is not applicable to any large portion 

 of the field of anthropology. Other exhibits still may serve for pur- 

 poses of comparison of what different peoples do living under distinct 

 environments, as, for example, the series of drinking vessels in the 

 East Hall; of what has been accomplished by different nations or 

 establishments, as in the ceramic section. 



PLACEMENT OE EXHIBITS. 



The accompanying ground plan will serve to indicate the distribution 

 of the grand divisions of exhibits in the Museum building. The col- 

 lections of prehistoric arch;eology, placed in the great hall of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, belong to Group A, 



Grand diviaions of anthropological exhibits in tho Museum building. 



The areas occui)ied by tlie three grand divisions are indicated by let- 

 ters as follows: 



A. Geographical presentation of men and culture. 



B. Developmental presentation of human activities. 



C. Special presentations of activities and phenomena. 



Four great halls and their galleries are devoted to exhibits assem- 

 bled on the geographical plan (A), the peoples of the world being repre- 



