2 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 



In accordance with a resolution of the Board of Reoents adopted 

 January 8, 1890, by which its annual meeting occurs on the fourth 

 Wednesday of each year, the Board met on January 24, 1894, at 10 

 o'clock a, in. The journal of its proceedings willbe found, as hitherto, 

 in- the annual report of the Boa^'d to Congress, though reference is 

 made later on in tliis report to several matters npon which action was 

 taken at that meetiug. 



There has been no change in the personnel of the Board during the 

 year, the Regents whose terms have expired having been reappointed, 

 as follows : 



Dr. Andrew D. White, reappointed by joint resolution of Congress 

 approved by the President, March 10, 1894. 



The Honorabfe Joseph Wheeler, the Honorable W. C. P. Breckin- 

 ridge, and the Honorable Robert R. Hitt, reappointed by the Speaker 

 of the House of Representatives on January 4, 1894. 



ADMINISTRATION. 



I desire to repeat the recommendation contained in my Last report 

 that Congress be asked to make an appropriation to cover the expenses 

 incurred by the Institution incident to the administration of its Gov- 

 ernment trusts. These expenses are not specifically provided for by 

 any of the present appropriations, since they belong not singly to tbe 

 National Museum, or to the Bureau of Ethnology, or to the Inter- 

 national Exchange Service, or the like, but to expenditures common to 

 all of them, and which are not arranged for by the terms of the appro- 

 priations for any one. I repeat that, in the words of a previous report, 

 it is in the interests of economy that this expenditure should be met 

 from some common source, owing to the limited size of the establish- 

 ments in question, some of which are rather assimilable to divisions 

 than to bureaus. It is evident, for instance, that an appropriation of 

 $17,000 for international exchanges, or an appropriation of $10,000 for 

 an observatory, can not each so well bear the separate provision of a 

 disbursing officer, a stenographer, and the other like employees, as in 

 the case of larger bureaus, but that their limited needs can be better and 

 more economically managed by not dupbcating such offices. There is, 

 however, no practicable way of arranging this in compliance with the 

 present terms of the appropriations, which may be said to tacitly assume 

 that each of these bureaus or divisions is thus completely provided for. 

 It is in some cases impossible that it should be so without the expend- 

 iture of greatly more than the appropriated sum, and the terms of the 

 appropriations should, in the interest of economy, either recognize the 

 propriety of meetiug each bureau's share of these common expenses out 

 of each one's appropriation or else out of a special appropriation made 

 in their common interest. 



