10 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1921. 
thus stamping the Museum at the very outset as one of the widest 
range and at the same time as the Museum of the United States. It 
was also appreciated that additions would be necessary to the col- 
lections then in existence, and provision was made for their increase 
by the exchange of duplicate specimens, by donations, and by other 
means. 
Tf the wisdom of Congress in so fully providing for a museum in 
the Smithsonian law challenges attention, the interpretation put. 
upon this law by the Board of Regents within less than six months 
from the passage of the act can not but command admiration. In 
the early part of September, 1846, the Regents took steps toward 
formulating a plan of operations. The report of the committee 
appointed for this purpose, submitted in December and January 
following, shows a thorough consideration of the subject in both the 
spirit and letter of the law. It would seem not out of place to cite 
here the first pronouncement of the board with reference to the char- 
acter of the Museum: 
“In obedience to the requirements of the charter, which leaves 
little discretion in regard to the extent of accommodations to be 
provided, your committee recommend that there be included in the 
building a museum of liberal size, fitted up to receive the collections 
destined for the Institution. * * * 
“As important as the cabinets of natural history by the charter 
required to be included in the Museum, your committee regard its 
ethnological portion, including all collections that may supply items 
in the physical history of our species, and illustrate the manners, 
customs, religions, and progressive advance of the various nations of 
the world; as, for example, collections of skulls, skeletons, portraits, 
dresses, implements, weapons, idols, antiquities, of the various races 
of man. * * * In this connexion your committee recommend 
the passage of resolutions asking the cooperation of certain public 
functionaries and of the public generally in furtherance of the 
above objects. 
“Your committee are further of opinion that in the Museum, if 
the funds of the Institution permit, might judiciously be included 
various series of models illustrating the progress of some of the most 
useful inventions; such, for example, as the steam engine from its 
earliest and rudest form to its present most improved state; but this 
they propose only so far as it may not encroach on ground already 
covered by the numerous models in the Patent Office. 
“ Specimens of staple materials, of their gradual manufacture, and 
of the finished product of manufactures and the arts may also, your 
1 Since the Institution was not chartered in a legal sense, but established by Congress, 
the use of the word ‘‘ charter’ in this connection was not correct. 
