THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUION 



[With 21 plates] 



"The advancement of the highest interests of national science 

 and learning and the custody of objects of art and of the valuable 

 results of scientific expeditions conducted by the United States have 

 been committed to the Smithsonian Institution. In furtherance of 

 its declared purpose — for the 'increase and diffusion of knowledge 

 among men ' — the Congress has from time to time given it other 

 important functions. Such trusts have been executed by the insti- 

 tution with notable fidelity. There should be no halt in the work 

 of the Institution, in accordance with the plans which its Secretary 

 has presented, for the preservation of the vanishing races of great 

 North American animals in the National Zoological Park. The ur- 

 gent needs of the National Museum are recommended to the favorable 

 consideration of the Congress." (President lioosevelt's first mes- 

 sage to Congress.) 



In the popular mind, the Smithsonian Institution is a picturesque 

 castellated building of brown stone, containing birds and shell.- and 

 beasts and many other things, situated in a beautiful park at Wash- 

 ington, with another large adjacent building, often called "the 

 Smithsonian National Museum." The Institution is likewise sup- 

 posed to have a large corps of learned men, all of whom are called 

 "professors" (which they are not), whose time is spent in writing 

 books and making experiments and answering all kinds of questions 

 concerning the things in the heavens above, the earth beneath, and 

 the waters under the earth. 



Contrast this popular notion with the facts. The Smithsonian 

 Institution is an "Establishment," created by an act of Congress, 

 which owes its origin to the bequest of James Smithson, an English- 

 man, a scientific man, and at one time a vice president of the Royal 

 Society, who died in Genoa in 1829, leaving his entire estate to the 

 United States of America "to found at Washington, under the name 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase 

 and diffusion of Imowledge among men." 



After 10 years of debate in Congress, turning partly on the ques- 

 tion whether the Government ought to accept such a bequest at all 

 and put itself in the unprecedented position of the guardian of a 



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