6 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUWEUM, 1893. 



good works was the lesson it taught as to the possibilities for good in 

 public museums. 



The objects whidi at the close of the Ceutennial were given to the 

 United States for its National Museum were of large intrinsic value, 

 and were also very imi)ortant from the fact that the necessity of caring 

 for them led to the erection of a large building for the expansion of the 

 Museum itself. 



In 1881, after the new building had been completed, the Museum 

 was entirely reorganized. 



In the early years Prof S. F. Baird, then Assistant Secretary, with 

 two or three assistants, was able to give all necessary attention to the 

 care of the collections, and the Museum was not formally divided into 

 departments. 



When the reorganization was made in 1881, under the immediate care 

 of the present Assistant Secretary, the diversity of the collections 

 made it necessary to establish a number of departments, each of which 

 was placed in charge of a curator, and the staff has since been con- 

 stantly increasing. This is at present composed of the officer in charge 

 and thirty-two curators and acting curators, twenty-two of whom 

 receive no salary from the Museum. There are also eleven administra- 

 tive offices, each under its own chief, while in connection witli the gen- 

 eral work of administration there is in the Museum a library, a chemi- 

 cal laboratory, a photographic laboratory, and various workshops for 

 taxidermy, modeling, and for the preparation of skeletons for exhibi- 

 tion. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 3IUSEUM IDEA. 



The history of the National Museum may, then, be divided into three 

 periods : — 



First, that from the foundation of the Smithsonian Institution to 

 1857, during which time specimens were collected purely and solely to 

 serve as materials for research, no special efforts being made to exhibit 

 them to the public or to utilize them except as a foundation for scien- 

 titic descrii)tion and theory. 



Second, the period from 1857, when the institution assumed the cus- 

 tody of the " National Cabinet of Curiosities,'' to 187G. During this 

 period the Museum became a place of deposit for scientific material 

 which had already been studied, this material, so far as convenient, 

 being exhibited to the public and, so far as practicable, made to serve 

 an educational purpose. 



Third, the present period, beginning in the year 187(5, within which the 

 Museum has entered more fully into the work of gathering collections 

 and exhibiting them on account of their value from an educational 

 8tand])oint. 



In the first period the main object of the Museum was scientitic 

 research: in the second, the establishment became a museum of record 



