REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1921. is 
provided for and the kindergarten pupil and the high-school scholar 
can be seen here supplementing their class-room games or studies. 
Under authority from Congress the small colleges and higher grades 
of schools and academies throughout the land, especially in places 
where museums do not exist, are also being aided in their educational 
work by sets of duplicate specimens, selected and labeled to meet the 
needs of both teachers and pupils. 
Nor has the elementary or even the higher education been by any 
means the sole gainer from the work of the Museum. To advance 
knowledge, to gradually extend the boundaries of learning, has been 
one of the great tasks to which the Museum, in consonance with the 
spirit of the Institution, has set itself from the first. Its staff, though 
chiefly engaged in the duties incident to the care, classification, and 
labeling of collections in order that they may be accessible to the 
public and to students, has yet in these operations made important 
discoveries in every department of the Museum’s activities, which 
have in turn been communicated to other scholars through its 
numerous publications. But the collections have not been held for the 
study of the staff nor for the scientific advancement of those belong- 
ing to the establishment. Most freely have they been put at the dis- 
posal of investigators connected with other institutions, without 
whose help the record of scientific progress based upon the material 
in the Museum would have been greatly curtailed. When it is pos- 
sible to so arrange, the investigator comes to Washington; otherwise 
such collections as he needs are sent to him, whether he resides in this 
country or abroad. In this manner practically every prominent 
specialist throughout the world interested in the subjects here well 
represented has had some use of the collections and thereby the Na- 
tional Museum has come to be recognized as a conspicuous factor in 
the advancement of knowledge wherever civilization has a foothold. 
