tME 0ENESI8 OF THE NATIONAL MUfSErM. 33 1 



Office, ami known as '' tlio iSational Institute." Of these a catalogue 

 was publislied by Alfred Hunter in 1859.* 



They were afterwards placed iu some old cases in a i)assageway in 

 the Patent Office, and many valuable specimens and books were de- 

 stroyed or stolen, there being no one responsible for their safety.! 



Prof. Baird told the writer that tlie ])ooks and s])ecimens were placed 

 on top of some tile cases in a basement corridor, near an outer door, 

 and that a person with a cane could at any time dislodge an armful 

 and carry them away without impediment. 



In 18G1, shortly before the cliarter tinally expired by limitation, the 

 birds and insects were almost completely destroyed, and the library 

 reduced to broken sets of periodicals and transactions. Such as they 

 were, they were delivered by the Secretary of the Interior to the 

 Smithsonian Institution.:}: 



This was the end of the ISTatioual Institute and its efforts to found a 

 national museum, the end of the National Cabinet of Curiosities, and 

 of the Xational Gallery except so far as it continued in the possession 

 of the Washington relics and the Franklin press exhibited in one of 

 the halls of the Patent Office. 



THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION AND THE NATIONAL CABINET OF 



CURIOSITIES, 



After ten years of discussion, a bill to incorporate the Smithsonian 

 Institution received the approval of Congress and the President. The 

 charter, in its final form, does not appear to have represented fairly the 

 views of any one party, excejjt that which favoietl the library and inci- 

 dentally the museum. Several special provisions, not from our present 

 point of view, harmonious with the spirit of Smithson's bequest, were 

 eliminated, and the act, as tinally ])assed, while broad enough to admit 

 upon the foundation almost any work for intellectual advancement, was 

 fortunately expressed in such general terms as to allow a large share ot 

 liberty to the trustees or regents. 



The Smithsonian Institution has had ui)on its governing board many 

 of the noblest and wisest of the men of the nation, and the Kegents to 

 whom, during the tirst four years of its corporate existence, the decision 

 of its i)olicy ami its fat are tendencies was intrusted, were chosen from 

 among the very best of those at that time in i)ublic life. 



Among them were George M. Dallas, the tirst chancellor, at that time 

 Vice-President of the United States; Chief Justice Taney; Rufus 

 Choate, of Massachusetts; Kobert Dale Owen, of Indiana; George P. 

 Marsh, of Vermont; Lewis Cass, of Michigan; Jefferson Davis, of Mis- 



" Hunter's Bibliography. 



t It is said that some eiiliglitened Commissioner of Patents, in power between 

 1850 and 1860, was annoyed l)y tlie presence of a collection of fossil vertebrates in 

 one of the rooms in his Imildino-, and without eonsnltinjif any one sent them to a 

 bone mill in Georgetown, where they were transformed into commercial fertilizers— 

 once fur thought, they now became food for the farmers' crops. 



f Smithsonian Report, 1862. p. 15. 



