REPORT OX THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY, 

 By Leonhakd Stejkeger, Head Curator. 



IMPORTANT CHANGES IX ORGANIZATION" AND STAFF. 



The present organization of the department of biology is but 

 slightly different from what it was twenty years ago. In 1900 

 it embraced nine divisions with a salaried scientific staff of 18 per- 

 sons: in 1910 there were eight divisions, with a similar staff of 

 19 persons; at the beginning of the fiscal year 1919-20 it con- 

 sisted of seven divisions with 20 salaried scientific workers. Nor 

 has the honorary staff been materially increased during that period. 

 Twenty j-ears ago the collections, then only a fraction of their 

 present magnitude, were housed in the old museum building and 

 the Smithsonian building. At the end of the first half of this 

 period they occupied practically the same space as at the begin- 

 ning, and the staff was then barely able to cope with the increase. 

 Then, in 1910-11, came the moving into the new building. The 

 enormous collections had to be removed and rearranged, but there 

 Was no increase in the scientific staff. The time which the staff 

 formerly had been able to devote to study of and report upon the 

 collections was then to a great extent taken up with the reinstalla- 

 tion, a work - which in some of the divisions is scarcely finished as 

 yet for lack of increase in the staff. In the meantime the collections 

 grew at an unprecedented rate. Thus of plants alone there were 

 added more than one million specimens during the twenty years, 

 and in other divisions the increase was not less startling. If in 

 some of them the increase does not amount to such figures, the 

 specimens made up in bulk what they lacked in numbers. Thus, 

 this period saw the addition of the unequaled mammal material 

 gathered by the various African and Malayan expeditions. Addi- 

 tional work and care was thrown upon the vertebrate divisions 

 by the abolition of the division of comparative anatomy and the 

 distribution of its bulky and diverse collections among the other 

 four divisions. With this vast increase in the material and the 

 consequent mounting care and responsibility; with the great ex- 

 pansion of the activities after the occupancy of the new building; 

 and with the constantly growing demands due to the rapid prog- 

 ress of science in this country and abroad, there has been no ex- 

 pansion of the organization of the department of biology, the 



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