70 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1920. 



increase in its scientific staff having been one person for each ten 

 years. Xot only was there no expansion commensurate with the 

 growth of the collections and the buildings, but there was practi- 

 cally none whatever. In looking over the collections as they are 

 now as compared with what they were twenty years ago, and in 

 further contemplating the splendid series of 35 volumes of Pro- 

 ceedings and more than 80 volumes of Bulletins published by the 

 Museum during these twenty years the wonder is how it has been 

 humanly possible for the organization to accomplish such results. 



It was distinctly recognized when this department was inaugurated 

 that the organization was far from complete and that it was com- 

 paratively weak in the invertebrate classes, but it was hoped that 

 conditions would improve and that it would be possible gradually to 

 increase the divisions and augment the staff as the collections ex- 

 panded. Moreover, two other Government institutions, devoted pre- 

 eminently to biological research, namely, the Fish Commission and 

 the Bureau of Entomology, were in those early days in a better posi- 

 tion than they are to-day with regard to systematic zoological work 

 not directly applicable to economic problems. Their tendency has 

 been to gradually turn away from unapplied science and the work 

 in this line has been shifted more and more over on to the Museum. 



This lack of growth and expansion in the basic systematic work 

 of the Museum has reacted unfavorably on the work of the biological 

 scientists who in other branches of the federal or state government 

 have to apply the material supplied by museum workers to the eco- 

 nomic questions which in ever increasing degree are depending upon 

 strictly systematic research. As a result there has sprung up a move- 

 ment among scientific men outside of the Museum and of the Govern- 

 ment for the purpose of bringing about increased facilities and a 

 larger staff. At the meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science in New York during Convocation week 

 of 1916, the Entomological Society of America and the American 

 Association of Economic Entomologists appointed each a committee 

 of five members ' : to promote the adequate development of the insect 

 collections in the National Museum."' The two committees submitted 

 reports at the meeting in St. Louis in 1919. which were consolidated 

 into one and published in i: Science ? ' March 5. 1920. The gist of the 

 report is that " the National Museum, under present conditions, or 

 better, limitations, can not possibly adopt an adequate policy of 

 entomological development. The two prime obstacles are lack of 

 sufficient curators and lack of space. The present force of curators, 

 even with the aid afforded by the members of the Bureau of Ento- 

 mology, can not arrange and classify the collections already on hand. 

 incomplete as they arc. . . . The Museum should have enough ex- 

 pert curators to keep classified and in order the available material in 



