REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 9 



Museum would undoubtedly receive that support from the Govern- 

 ment which its history justifies and the promotion of its usefulness 

 demands. 



SOME IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR. 



The past year has been especially signalized by the amount of 

 material added to the collections, which has never before been 

 exceeded in any one year except at the close of the Philadelphia 

 Centennial Exhibition. The bulk of this material was obtained at 

 the Louisiana Purchase Exposition through the liberality of exhib- 

 itors, both foreign and domestic, whose contributions amounted in 

 the aggregate to over 30 carloads. Two or three of these carloads 

 consisted of specimens pertaining to the ethnology of several coun- 

 tries and to certain miscellaneous subjects, but the contents of 

 all the remainder were illustrative of mineral resources, chiefly of 

 the United States, and their manufacture. With the view of pro- 

 viding for the oversight of the latter a new department of the Museum, 

 entitled Mineral Technology was constituted under the curatorship 

 of Dr. Charles D. Walcott, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey, 

 who has also for a long period had an honorary connection with 

 the Museum staff. There is at present no place in which such an 

 extensive collection could be displayed, and it has therefore been 

 stored in bulk pending the completion of the new building. 



Not taking into account the objects in mineral technology, since 

 they could not be unpacked and counted, the total number of speci- 

 mens received during the year amounted to about a quarter of a 

 million. Next in importance to the donations at St. Louis was the 

 generous gilt by Capt. John Donnell Smith, of Baltimore, of his pri- 

 vate herbarium of over 100, 000 plants, mainly from tropical America, 

 and of his choice botanical library of about 1,(300 volumes. Another 

 benefactor was Dr. William L. Abbott, of Philadelphia, an accom- 

 plished naturalist, who for some seven or eight years has lived in the 

 Ear East, devoting his time to the collection of specimens and infor- 

 mation in the fields of /oology and ethnology. The region he has 

 covered, mainly the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and many 

 near-by islands, has heretofore been practically unrepresented in this 

 Museum. Mention should also be made of the important field-work 

 done in the Philippines, especially on the island of Mindanao, by 

 Maj. Edgar A. Mearns, surgeon, U. S. Army, who discovered a practi- 

 cally new fauna on the upper slopes of Mount Apo. His valuable 

 collection, presented to the Museum, contains many new forms which 

 are now being studied. 



The collections in ethnology and archeology have been greatly 

 enriched by explorations in the southwestern United States and by 

 contributions from Japan, Australasia, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, 



