RKPOUT OF THK SECRETARY. 



HEGUI.AK MEI-:TIN(; ok MAK( 11 7, I'.IOI. 



The ChiiiHclloi- ivad in full tho report of the special committee 

 :i})p()int(Ml to consider the ([uestion of detininj^ the powers of the 

 exei'utive coniniittee. which was very fully discussed and adopted. 



Doctor Bell then read the special report of the executive committee 

 as presented by him nt the meetino- of December 8, 1903. After dis- 

 cussion the Board iidopted Senator Cullom's motion that action on the 

 report be iiuh^tinitely postponed. 



Th(» r(»port of tlu^ special committee on the disposition of the remains 

 of James Sniithson, in which it was recommended that a tittino- tomb 

 should be erected in the grounds of the Institution and that Congress 

 be re(iu(>sted to make an adequate appropriation for it, was sul)mitted. 

 After remarks the report was adopted with the understanding that the 

 committee was to pursue the subject still further. 



The Secretary l)rought before the Board the matter of the will of 

 the late Harriet Lane Johnston, who left a number of paintings to the 

 Corcoran Gallery of Art until a national gallery of art should l)e estal)- 

 lished by the Government. The Corcoran Gallery had declined the 

 pictures under these conditions, and the Secretary had been addressed 

 with regard to the probal)ility of the Government establishing such 

 a gallery of art under the Smithsonian Institution. The matter was 

 referred to the executive committee. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



The Institution has been for more than half a century one of the 

 most important agencies in the intellectual life of the American people. 

 It has furnished a center for workers in every department of scientific 

 and educational activity, and it has ))een the chief agency for the free 

 exchange of books, apparatus of research, and of scientific intelligence 

 between this and other countries. Its publications, which include 

 more than 250 volumes, are to be found in all of the important libraries 

 of the world, and some of them on the woik table of every scientific 

 investigator. Its library constitutes an important ]nirt of the Libiary 

 of Congress, and its museum is the rarest in existence in many branches 

 of the natural history and ethnology of the New World. 



For nearly sixty years it has been in constant cooperation with the 

 Government, Avitii public institutions, and with individuals in every 

 enterprise, scientific or educ-ational, which needed its advice, support, 

 or aid. The appreciation of the woi-k of the Institution by the Ameri- 

 can people is best testified by their representatives in Congress. This 

 has been clearly demonstrated through many successive terms regard- 

 less of political change; by the judgment with which their representa- 

 tives upon the Board of Regents are selected; ))y the care by which 

 .they protect the Institution in its freedom from political entangle- 



