[<;^ REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



only performs these functions, but also does a very great deal to render 

 the resources of science available to the i)ublic at large. 



The National Museum is a treasure-house filled with materials for the 

 use of investigators, and it is also an agency for the instruction of the 

 peoph^ of the whole country. 



In a recent address before the American Historical Association, I 

 attempted to exi)lain the idea of our work as follows: 



(1) That public institutions of learning are not intended for the few, 

 but for the enlightenment and education of the masses. 



(L') That the public has a right to full participation in the results of 

 the work of the scientific establishments which they are helping to 

 maintain. 



(3) That one of the chief duties of the officers of these institutions 

 is to provide means by which such results may be presented in an 

 attractive as well as an intelligible form. 



No scientific institution is more thoroughly committed to the work of 

 the diflusion of knowledge than is the Smithsonian Institution, and no 

 department of its activity has greater possibilities in this respect than 

 the National Museum. 



The benefits of the Museum are extended not only to the specialists 

 in its laboratories and to the hundreds of thousands of visitors from 

 all parts of the United States who pass its doors each year, but to local 

 institutions and their visitors throughout the country, through the dis- 

 tribution of the duplicate specimens in the Museum, which are made 

 up into sets, accurately named, and distributed to schools and museums. 

 Every museum in the United States has profited in this way, and by 

 its system of exchange the Museum has, while enriching itself, con- 

 tributed largely to the stores of every important scientific museum in 

 the world. 



Not only are specimens thus sent out, but aid is rendered in other 

 ways. Within the last year many local museums in the United States 

 were supplied with working plans of cases in use in the Museum, and 

 similar sets of plans have been supplied within the past few years to 

 national museums in other countries. 



Not only do the people of the country at large profit by the work of 

 the Smithsonian, as made available to local institutions, but also to a 

 very considerable extent directly and personally. 



The curator of each department in the Museum is expected to be an 

 authority in his own line of work, and the knowledge of the whole 

 staff' of experts is thus placed, without cost, at the service of every 

 citizen. 



It is much to be regretted that many specialists, intent chiefly upon 

 the study of certain scientific problems in which they individually are 

 absorbed, are disposed to neglect the claims of the educated public to 

 the enjoyment and instruction which museums afford. They do not 

 hesitate to say that scientific museums should be administered for the 



