498 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



and its appropriate and timely liberality furnished the funds and 

 means for the dissemination. 



It has alread}^ been remarked that the unique character of Mr. 

 Smithson's bequest rendered it difficult of administration upon any 

 plan that should not be sanctioned by some experience, and hence if 

 there should be suggested a slight departure from the requirements 

 of the letter of the law of 1846, by which the Institution was organ- 

 ized for action, it must not be understood as censuring the views of 

 those who labored in the plan and secured the efficient and desirable 

 action of Congress. At that time gentlemen of the highest distinction 

 in literature and science differed in their views of the best means of 

 carr3'ing out the wishes of the founder. Each had a favorite theory 

 as it regards the efficiency of certain means or modes, and that differ- 

 ence arose greatly from previous habits and associations or from the 

 influence which the greater mind had upon the less. 



It can not be denied that the creation of an immense library was a 

 favorite and the dominant idea of many who at that time leaned 

 entirely upon foreign writers for information and resorted to books 

 rather than to experiments and observations for exact information on 

 any science. Such a course seems natural where it had been universal, 

 and the opinions are likely to be operative just in proportion to the 

 dependence of minds upon books; and hence a vast collection of vol- 

 umes in any city of the fourth or fifth class in point of size and as 

 yet of no particular class in point of science and literature seemed to 

 promise a fulfillment of the wishes of Smithson. 



Yet these volumes were not to "increase the amount of knowledge 

 among men;" they only recorded the existing amount, were merely 

 the storehouses of what had been gathered and kept in the city of 

 Washington, as yet only the political center of the nation, and it is 

 dificult to see how they would serve greatl}^ to "diffuse that knowl- 

 edge among men." 



Another part of the plan is the establishment of a museum, and, in 

 the opinion of the committee, this, if kept within just bounds, is a 

 valuable part of the general plan. The danger is that a museum, 

 instead of being what its name implies, will become a receptacle for 

 all the freaks of nature which a morbid curiosit}^ may discover and 

 the resort of those who would rather be amused with a lusus natu?'CB 

 of any kind than with a well-arranged and instructive display of prod- 

 ucts in their scientific order. 



A museum for the Smithsonian Institution should be of a kind to 

 assist the student and the master in natural studies and enable them 

 to pursue their inquiries to the full extent of attained results, that 

 they may increase the amount of that kind of knowledge — may add to 

 what is already known; and when they shall have completed that com- 



