6 PEOCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



America peoi)led from the east, or was Asia made ])opiilous from the 

 west ? Such a deduction from one single class of objects w^ould be a 

 most unsafe conclusion ; but when in such a museum, at some future 

 date, a great stock of material will be furnished, and a series of things 

 brought in close juxtaposition, when the labors of thousands of col- 

 lectors are fused, as it were, into one whole, then the anthropologist, 

 ethnologist, and archfeologist can apply their individual tests conjointly 

 or separately, and much of the turbidity which exists to-day will be 

 fined out, and a clearer and more limpid solution must come from it. 



The building is a square one, with sides of 327 feet. It is surmounted 

 by a cross and dome. Within there is a net area of 102,200 square feet, 

 or 2.35 acres, the whole building being under one roof. On the main 

 floor there are 17 halls, which communicate with wide and lofty arch- 

 ways, and there are 80,300 square feet of floor space. No less than 135 

 rooms are available for administrative functions, such as ofl&ces, &c. 

 At present occupying these ofQces are those engaged in work on the 

 geological survey, materia medica, analysis of foods, mineralogy, eco- 

 nomic geology, entomology, chemistry, mammalogy, paleontology, her- 

 petology, and photography. There are many more otflces not yet occu- 

 pied, but which will soon be filled with workers. The material is so 

 vast that the task of studying it will never cease. 



Taking up once more the considerations which have induced the gov- 

 ernment to undertake so great a task, those who have been its scientific 

 advisers have fully brought to its notice the vast accumulation of mate- 

 rial existing in Washington and throughout the country, and how, 

 hidden away as it was, aside from the question of loss or dispersion, in 

 its present condition it was utterly unavailable. When once such a 

 work was undertaken, the exhibition of all the government collections, 

 those which must necessarily be made in the future, it was shown, would 

 find in this museum their natural resting place. It is by the power of 

 generaUzation necessarily cosmical in its character that the great 

 advance this nation is making will be then recorded. It is in a national 

 museum that all specialists will come to study, and, as the attraction 

 of the greater mass will be irresistible, this museum must in time absorb 

 many lesser ones. Either by purchase or bequest, before long, minor 

 collections will come to it, of all possible kinds, just as happens to-day 

 to the British Museum. 



It may take some years before some of those special branches of 

 human work such as France, England, Germany, Sixain, Russia, or Italy 

 glories in will find their way to our National Museum, but it is simply 

 a question of time. Save in this respect, it seems that in ten years this 

 museum will have no rival. Its present is assured. For its luture its 

 plans are so intelligently conceived that it must increase in proportion 

 with the growth of the country. Always remembering that there it. no 

 scientific fact discoverable, no matter how abstruse it seems, or to what field 

 of study it belongs, which does not directly tend toward man's welfare, 



(568) 



