[Proceediugs United States National Museum, 1881. Appendix.] 

 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



TJN"ITEI3 ST^^TES N" ^ T I O IST J>^ L M! TJ S K TJ Bd . 



No. 2. 



CIRCVIiAR ADDRESISED TO FRIEIVOS OF THE mUSEUmr. 



The new Museum building is now finished, and the installation of the 

 collections within its walls is being carried on as fast as exhibition cases 

 can be built. The large additional space now available for the display 

 of specimens renders it practicable for the officers of the Museum to 

 carry out the long cherished plan of making it an educational exhibition 

 of the most useful kind. 



Few jjersons realize what a wealth of material is stored away in the 

 vaults and attics of the Smithsonian building and the " Armory," which 

 has been used as a deposit since 1876, in addition to the exhibits of the 

 thirty or more foreign governments, given to the United States at the 

 end of the Philadelphia Exposition, there is a still greater bulk of val- 

 uable material obtained then and since from private and State exhibi- 

 tions made upon the same occasion. 



Still more important are the collections made for that occasion by the 

 Fish Commission and the Smithsonian Institution, and by the various 

 agencies of the latter during the past twenty years, and which, for lack 

 of room, have never been publicly exhibited. 



In the new building will be concentrated all the industrial collections, 

 and all the ethnological specimens, except the reserve series of pre-his- 

 toric stone implements. In the old building will be kept those collec- 

 tions which are most important as material for purely scientific inves- 

 tigation, such as the main collection of birds, the fishes, and reptiles in 

 alcohol, the marine invertebrates, &c. The new building will, however, 

 contain the collections in economic natural history. 



The collections in the new building are intended to form an Anthropo- 

 logical Museum^ organized upon the broadest and most liberal interpre- 

 tation of the term "anthropology," and illustrating the characteristics 

 of civilized as well as savage races of mankind and their attainments 

 in civilization and culture. The central idea will be man., and the man- 

 ner in which he adapts the products of the earth to his needs. All 

 useful and noxious animals, plants, and minerals will be shown, indus- 

 tries by means of which they are utilized — by both method and finished 

 product — and finally, the various objects which men use for any pur- 

 pose whatever. A place is provided for every ohject icJtich has a name. 



A thorough system of descriptive labels and guide-book manua s is 

 l)rovided for. jSo siiecimen will be exhibited which is not so thoroughly 

 explained by its label that its significance may be understood by any in- 

 telligent visitor. 



With this scope and this method of exhibition, the Museum will be of 



(537) 



