1 1 8 Memorial of George Brozvn Goode. 



P'ifth. That in all cases of difficulty which may arise, reference must be made to the 

 President or Vice-President of the Institution for decision, who will, if they conceive 

 it necessary, submit the question to the Institution. 



Sixth. That a book be kept by the Curator, subject at all times to the inspection of 

 the committee, in which must be noted the contents of each box or package ; lists of 

 the articles for which they are the equivalents ; the name and place of the society or 

 individual to whom one set is to be sent, and from whom the other has been received. 



In what the committee have now submitted, they conceive that they have done all 

 that it was possible or necessary to do at present, in reference to the third point of the 

 resolution, viz : "reporting fully on the subject ; " although they are perfectly sensi- 

 ble that in their report they have presented the subject in the most general manner, 

 believing that experience and practice alone will enable the Institution gradually to 

 settle upon a complete system. The committee beg leave to add, that the present 

 report is not to be regarded as final, but that it is submitted, with all due deference 

 to the Institution, to use the concluding words of the resolution, "for its further 

 consideration and action." 



Shortly after this, on March 8, in order to provide for the reception 

 of these collections, Doctor Henry King ' was elected curator of the 

 National Instittition, the first in Washington to bear an official title 

 which has since been the designation of a goodly number of worthy 

 workers in science. 



The curator, although an elective officer of the Institution, received 

 his pay from the Congressional appropriation already referred to, an 

 arrangement not unlike that which prevails to this day in the National 

 Mitseum, where the officers, chosen by the Smithsonian Institution, are 

 paid by the General Government. 



The collections arrived some time in March, and in response to its 

 request Mr. Badger, the newly made Secretary of the Navy, placed them 

 under the care of the National Instittition, and in April, as we learn 

 from the unpublished letters of the curator, the taxidermists were 

 preparing about fifteen bird skins a day, a rate of speed which quite 

 explains the atrocious condition of the preparations which have come 

 down to us from those days of the infancy of the National Museum. 

 In May additional collections, brought by the ship Suzanne to New 

 York and thence transshipped by the schooner Palestine, were received 

 in Washington. 



A new danger now threatened the integrity of the collections, which 

 was that the curator found many of the boxes "marked in such a 



' Henry King, M. D. , was a geologist and mining expert who had been a resident 

 of Missouri, who had lately been employed in an exploration of the lead mines of 

 the West, and who at this time was employed by the War Department in Washing- 

 ton. He was the author of a manual of Directions for making Collections in Natu- 

 ral History, published in 1840 by the Institution, the first part of a long series of 

 pamphlets of scientific instructors, printed. at the capital. [1840. King, Henrj'. 

 Directions for making Collections in Natural History. Prepared for the National 

 Institution for the Promotion of Science ; by H. King, M. D. Washington. Printed 

 l)y Gales & Seaton. 1840. 8vo., pp. 1-24.] 



Doctor King was elected curator March 8, 1841, and held the office until September 

 12, 1842, when he was succeeded by Doctor Charles Pickering. 



