REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 7 



the Government service, fishermen, fur traders, private explorers, 

 and such powerful organizations as the Hudson Bay Company and the 

 Western Union Telegraph Company were enlisted in the cause and 

 rendered valuable assistance. The influence exerted by these begin- 

 nings has been lasting and widespread, as shown in the extensive nat- 

 ural histor}' operations of subsequent national and State surveys, the 

 organization of the United States Fish Commission, and the support 

 given to scientific collecting by many other liureaus of the Govern- 

 ment. 



Having as its first purpose the promotion of scientific research, next 

 accepting the custody of the Government and other collections, and 

 finally developing broadly along educational lines, the historv of the 

 National Museum may, as the late Doctor Goode has pointed out, be 

 divided into three epochs, which he describes as follows: 



First, the period from the foundation of the Smithsonian Institution to 1857, dur- 

 ing which time specimens were collected solely to serve as materials for research. 

 No special effort was made to exhibit them to the public or to utilize them, except 

 as a foundation for scientific description and theory. 



Second, the period from 1857, when the institution assumed the custody of the 

 *• National Cabinet of Curiosities," to 1876. During this period the Museum became 

 a |)lace of deposit for .scientific collections which had already been studied, these col- 

 lections, so far as convenient, being exhibited to the public and, so far as practicable, 

 made to serve an educational purpose. 



Third, the present period (beginning in the year 1876), in which the Museum has 

 undertaken more fully the additional task of gathering collections and exhibiting 

 them on account of their value from an educational standpoint. 



During the first period the main object of the Museum was scientific research; in 

 the second, the establishment became a museum of record as well as of research; 

 while in the third period has been added the idea of public education. The three 

 ideas — record, research, and education — cooperative and mutually helpful as they are, 

 are essential to the development of every great museum. The National Museum 

 endeavors to promote them all. 



It is a mviseum of record, in which are preserved the material foundations of an 

 enormous amount of scientific knowledge — the typesof numerous past investigations. 

 This is especially the case with those materials that have served as a foundation for 

 the reports upon the resources of the United States. 



It is a museum of research, which aims to make its contents serve in the highest 

 degree as a stimulus to inquiry and a foundation for scientific investigation. Research 

 is necessary in order to identify and group the objects in the most philosophical and 

 instructive relations, and its officers are therefore selected for their ability as investi- 

 gators, as well as for their trustworthiness as custodians. 



It is an educational museum, through its policy of illustrating by specimens every 

 kind of natural object and every manifestation of human thought and activity, of 

 displaying descriptive labels adapted to the popular mind, and of distributing its 

 pul)lications and its named series of duplicates. 



In these words the objects of the ]Sluseum are so clearly defined and 

 the plan laid down is so broad that those who come after have but to 

 perfect the details while preserving that unity of interests Avhich is 

 requisite if the structure as a whole shall forever prove worthj' of its 

 founders and of this great nation. 



