REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 11 



ofteied at prices very unicli below what it would cost to obtain it by 

 collectiii<i-, and in many instances, when refused, it is ea.i>erly taken 

 by the niuseunis and institutions of Europe. 



The Museum in its present condition may be compared to a book 

 from which pages here and there have be<'n omitted, so that the narra- 

 tive is disjointed and incomplete. 



The museums of England are rich with the accumulations of centu- 

 ries. The National Museum of the United States is youug, and has 

 enormous deficiencies in every department. In needs, more than any 

 museum in Europe, the opportunity to increase its resources through 

 j)urchase. The total amount expended for the purchase of specimens 

 for the National Museum since 1889 has averaged less than $6,000 a 

 year. 



For the purchase of specimens for tlie South Kensington Museum, 

 from 1853 to 1887, $1,586,634 was expended, or a yearly average of 

 nearly $47,000. 



Toward her other museums England is equally liberal. Exact sta- 

 tistics are not at hand, but it is quite within bounds to assert that her 

 average expenditures for the purchase of new objects for museums in 

 London is not less than $500,000 a year. 



Our museum is the result of the activities of an enlightened Govern- 

 ment. Through a thousand channels materials for the formation of a 

 museum come into the possession of the Government, and out of such 

 materials our museum has been built. A museum formed in this man- 

 ner, however, suffers sooner or later from immense accumulations of 

 objects of certain kinds and from the absence of others. This is true 

 of the National Museum. At the outset no additions were unwelcome, 

 and the expectation that all important deficiencies would be supplied, 

 might i)roperly be indulged in. As the years have passed, however, it 

 has l)ecome more and more apparent that many of these deficiencies 

 can be supplied only by purchase. 



More striking present results might certainly have been attained by 

 limiting the developments of the Museum to special fields. We have, 

 however, had in view the future as well as the present, aiul no object 

 has been refused a place in the Museum which is likely to be needed, 

 even in the remote future, in the development of whatc^ver grand 

 museum plans the nation may ultimately be willing to promote. 



]i._OEGANIZATION AND SCOPE OF THE MUSEUM. 



The National Museum is under the charge of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, and its operations are supervised by the Board of Eegents of 

 the Institution. 



The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution is by law the ^'keeper 

 of the Smithsonian ]\Iuseum,'' and the Assistant Secretary, by the usage 

 of nearly fifty years, its executive head. 



