REPORT ON THE DEPARTMENT OF METALLURGY 

 IX THE U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



By F. !'. Dewey, Curator, 



The chief work of the department for the year has been the prepara- 

 tion and arrangement of the material for exhibition in the southwest 

 court upon the plan which was commenced during the previous year. 



A i first it was contemplated to prepare only one-half of the court for 

 exhibition and then throw it open to the public, but afterwards it was 

 decided to prepare the whole court before any portion was thrown open. 

 This necessitated some changes in the plan of the work, and especially 

 as regards the disposition of duplicate and reserve material. It also 

 increased the labor of handling the specimens, owing to the crowded 

 condition of both the exhibition and storage spaces. The work was 

 pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and the court was thrown open 

 to the public about the middle of April. 



In this work of condeusing the exhibits to tit the restricted space, it 

 was necessary to remove a large number of specimens from the exhibi- 

 tion scries for want of space. Although the cases are even now over- 

 crowded, fully one-third of the exhibition series, as it stood when this 

 work of transfer began, has been removed and divided between the 

 reserve and duplicate series. 



In February the Curator made a visit to Providence, lihode Island, 

 to examine a very valuable collection of petroleum and related mate- 

 rials which had been made for the .Museum by Prof. S. F. Peck ham. 

 Arrangements were made for sending the collection to Washington in 

 such shape that a portion of it could be immediately placed upon ex- 

 hibition, in order to continue and complete the collection illustrating 

 the subject of carbon in the systematic series. 



The latter part ot May the Curator joined the party of American en- 

 gineers which visited Europe at the invitation of the English, French, 

 and German Engineering societies, and was absent from Washington 

 dining the balance of the .\car. On this trip the Curator visited t he 

 museums of London and Paris and also spent considerable time at the 

 exposition in Paris. 



The most important accession received during the year was the col- 

 lection of petroleums mentioned above. This collection was made for 



413 



