REPORT OF ASSISTANT DIRECTOR. 33 



e) Students and lectures. 



Reference has been made in previous reports to the arrangement by 

 which, at the request of the Kavy Department, the Institution received 

 for three successive years six ensigns, and assigned them to duty in 

 various sections of the National Museum for the purpose of enabling 

 them to become acquainted with certain branches of science, such as 

 chemistry, mineralogy, geology, ethnology, general natural history, &c., 

 in order that in their subsequent cruises they might be more useful. 

 Three details of the kind have been made, none, however, in 1884, the 

 Department having founrl it inexpedient to continue the arrangement. 

 Most of the gentlemen already detailed have also been reclaimed and 

 assigned to duty. Two of these ensigns, Messrs. Miner and Garrett, 

 are now on the Fish Commission steamer "Albatross." Ensign Ilayden 

 was detached in October and ordered to duty, first at the Cambridge 

 Observatory, and subsequently to the United States Geological Survey. 



The experiment in connection with these junior officers of the Navy 

 has been very satisfactory as far as it has gone, and there can be no 

 doubt that the increased range of information thus acquired by the 

 eighteen gentlemen so detailed will be utilized to a considerable extent 

 in the future. 



The Museum is frequently favored by visits of men of science from 

 other countries for the purpose of special inquiry into its methods, and 

 an unusual number of such callers was welcomed during the past year 

 in connection with a meeting of the British Association in Montreal. 

 Several distinguished naturalists took the occasion to study the col- 

 lections of the National Museum, which they found to contain many im- 

 portant types otherwise inaccessible to them. 



Permission has been granted during the year to a considerable num- 

 ber of students of art to make copies of specimens in the Museum, and 

 an increase in the number of schools visiting the Museum in company 

 with their teachers has been noticeable. 



As in previous years, the use of the lecture room in the Museum on 

 Saturday afternoon during the winter and spring has been granted to 

 a joint committee of the Biological and Anthropological Societies of 

 Washington for the purpose of conducting a course of scientific lectures. 

 These lectures are usually in some way connected with the work of the 

 Museum, and are illustrated by specimens from the collections. They 

 correspond in character closely to the afternoon lectures given at the 

 gardens of the Zoological Society of London. 



The programme of the year is here appended : 



FIRST COURSE. 



Januarys, Mr. Grove K. Gilbert: Cliffs and terraces. 

 January 12, Prof Otis T. INlasou ; Child-life among savage and un- 

 civilized peoples. 



S. Mis. 33, pt. 2 3 



