366 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1891. 



The whole board consists of seventeen, five of which are the officers named, six are 

 the heads of the Government Depai"tments, ex-officio directors, and six are elected 

 annually from the body of members. Now, as it is hardly within the verge of pos- 

 sibility, that the offices of president, vice-president, secretaries, and treasurer of the 

 Institute will be tilled by any other men of known fitness and good character, so is it 

 impossible that eleven (adding the six ex-officio directors), a majority of the board, 

 can fail to deserve the fullest confidence of the Government. Then if we look to the 

 six elected directors and reflect for a moment upon the palpable and decided inter- 

 ests of the Institutt; and upon the vocations of its members, it is a ]nobability so 

 remote that it may be considered an impossibility that a great majority of this 

 board of managers can ever be other than jx^rsons deserving of confidence, holding- 

 important public places and in the employ of the Government. 



Now, then, if the Govermiient were to place the control of its collections and of 

 the appropriations for arranging and preserving them under this board of manage- 

 ment it would be placing its property and funds where all its other property and 

 funds are placed, namely, under its own officers and under accustomed and long 

 established responsibilities. But these officers are also officers of the Institute ; there- 

 fore to place this property under that board would also be to place it under the 

 Institute. 



Upon this plan the Institute would be made to fulfill the objects of its organiza- 

 tion, the most appropriate organ would be selected by the Government, and the 

 Government would, in the persons of its own officers, retain its just control over 

 its own property. 



If it should be said that this board of management can be controlled by directors 

 of the Institute, the answer is easy. It would be worse than idle for the Institute 

 to come in conflict with the Government or hazard a loss of its confidence, and it is 

 not fair to suppose, against all experience, that the small jKU'tion of common sense 

 necessary to avoid such a consequence would not be possessed by the Institute or 

 that it woiild be unmindful of its own palpable interests. 



Moreover, if this lioard of management should be required to lay a, statement of 

 its proceedings annually before Congress, it would be held to the established respon- 

 sibility of the difterent Government Dei>artments, and be subject, like them, to have 

 its course and conduct investigated and corrected. 



Such a i^lan would also preserve that union between the Government and the Insti- 

 tute collections so desirable and so essential to the prosperity of both. 



It has been intimated to us that there Avas a desire to sejjarate these and to form 

 a distinction between the exploring sqiuidron and the Institute collections. A course 

 more fatal to the prosiierity of both collections and to the great objects for which 

 the Institute was chartered could not well have been imagined. 



All the collections in the care of the Institute, from whatever sources received, are 

 either now the property of the Government or must by our charter eventually be- 

 come so. They are the results of various donations from foreign ministers and con- 

 suls abroad; from foreign institutions and foreign governments; donations from 

 domestic institutions and from citizens of our own country ; donations from officers 

 of our Army iiud Navy, the results of the official circulars from the War and Navy 

 Departments ; and deposits from individuals and from the difierent departments at 

 Washington. Let|tlie opinion once get abroad that contributions from the various 

 sources are not to receive from the protecting hand of the Government that atten- 

 tion Avhich their preservation and arrangement require ; let it once be supposed 

 that all these are to be neglected and those only of the (exploring squadron to be cared 

 for, and the consequence will soon be felt by the degenerating of the collection from 

 a great and increasing storehouse of all that our own and other countries can fur- 

 nish to that of a small museum, forever limited to the results of the exploring expe- 

 dition. 



Far be it from our intention, by these remarks, to undervalue the collection from 



