142 Memorial of George Drozvn Goode. 



Some of these were, it is true, but there was still a miscellaneous 

 collection, including many valuable objects, in the hall of the Patent 

 Office, and known as "the National Institute." Of these a catalogue 

 was published by Alfred Hunter in 1859.' 



They were afterwards placed in some old cases in a passageway in the 

 Patent Office, and many valuable specimens and books were destroyed or 

 stolen, there being no one responsible for their safety." 



Professor Baird told the writer that the books and specimens were placed 

 on top of some file cases in a basement corridor, near an outer door, and 

 that a person with a cane could at any time dislodge an armful and carry 

 them away without impediment. 



In 1861, shortly before the charter finally expired by limitation, the 

 birds and insects were almost completely destroyed and the library reduced 

 to broken sets of periodicals and transactions. Such as they were, they 

 were delivered by the Secretary of the Interior to the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution.^ 



This was the end of the National Institute and its efforts to found a 

 national museum, the end of the National Cabinet of Curiosities, and of 

 the National Gallery, except so far as it continued in the possession of the 

 Washington relics and the Franklin press, exhibited in one of the halls 

 of the Patent Office. 



THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND THE NATIONAL CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. 



After ten years of discussion, a bill to incorporate the Smithsonian 

 Institution received the approval of Congress and the President. The 

 charter, in its final form, does not appear to have represented fairly the 

 views of any one party, except that which favored the library and inci- 

 dentally the museum. Several special provisions, not from our present 

 point of view harmonious with the spirit of Smithson's bequest, were 

 eliminated, and the act as finally passed, while Inroad enough to admit 

 upon the foundation almost any work for intellectual advancement, was 

 fortunately expressed in such general terms as to allow a large share of 

 liberty to the trustees or regents. 



The Smithsonian Institution has had, upon its governing board many 

 of the noblest and wisest of the men of the nation, and the Regents, to 

 whom, during the first four years of its corporate existence, the decision 

 of its policy and its future tendencies was intrusted, were chosen from 

 among the very best of those at that time in public life. 



'Hunter's Bibliography. 



= It is said that some enlightened Commissioner of Patents, in power between 

 1850 and i860, was annoyed by the presence of a collection of fossil vertebrates in 

 one of the rooms in his building, and without consulting anyone sent them to a 

 bone mill in Georgetown, where they were transformed into commercial fertilizers— 

 once for thought, they now became food for the farmers' crops. 



3Smithsonian Report, 1862, p. 16. 



