REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 17 



logical Survey, the Division of Entomology and the Division of Plants 

 of the Department of Agriculture. The receipts from private estab- 

 lishments and from individuals, by donation and exchange, were also 

 large and of great value, and through the deposit of objects by their 

 owners many interesting features have been added to the exhibition 

 series. Field investigations by members of the Museum start', which 

 might be made an important means of building up the collections m 

 directions not otherwise covered, have, from lack of funds, only been 

 possible on a very limited scale. In fact, except for the opportunities 

 occasionally afforded to join with the held parties from other bureaus, 

 the Museum assistants could seldom engage in work of this character. 

 During last year, however, as elsewhere explained, they participated 

 in several such expeditions, which were exceedingly fruitful in results. 



"While the prominent museums throughout, the world have generally 

 the means of adding largely to their collections by purchase, this 

 method of acquiring specimens has always been a very minor resource 

 of the National Museum. For the past year Congress has appro- 

 priated $10,000 for this purpose, and though this sum is altogether 

 too small to be effective, the amounts previously available were even 

 much less. Disbursements are almost entirely limited to the purchase 

 of objects not previously represented, and many important desiderata 

 are thus supplied from year to year, but the requirements in this 

 regard can never be at all adequately satisfied without a considerable 

 increase in the size of the appropriation. 



Reference will be made in this connection to onl}' a few of the more 

 important accessions of the } T ear, the subject being fully covered in 

 the reports of the head curators and in Appendix II. 



In the Department of Anthropology the total number of specimens 

 received was 31,155, of which 26,644 specimens, or about 85 per cent, 

 belonged to prehistoric archaeology and were mainly derived from two 

 sources. The largest accession, consisting of over 18,000 stone imple- 

 ments from an ancient village site in Columbia County, Ga., was pur- 

 chased of the collector, Dr. Roland Steiner. The second in size, 

 comprising over 7,»)(H> similar implements and other objects princi- 

 pally from Maryland, the generous gift of Mr. J. I). McGuire, con- 

 stitutes the most important collection ever made in the Chesapeake 

 region by a single individual. Two other noteworthy additions in the 

 same line were collections of flint implements and rejectage of manu- 

 facture, one secured by the head curator. Mr. W. II. Holmes, during 

 an investigation of an ancient quarry site in Union County, 111., the 

 other, presented by Mr. II. W. Seton-Karr, of London, England, 

 illustrating the quarrying and stone shaping arts of the primitive 

 Egyptians. 



While the number of specimens added in the Division of Ethnology 



NAT MUS 1D01 2 



