REPORT OP THE SECRETARY. 19 



providing for their restoration to their own immediate controL The 

 foUoAving resolution offered then by Senator Gray was adopted: 



Rt'Kolved, That the question of the propriety of bringing the works 

 of art belonging to the Institution under the more immediate control 

 of the Board of Regents be referred to the Executive Committee and 

 the Secretary, with power to act. 



In pursuance of this the Institution brought back to its own keeping 

 a number of prints of value, both from the Lil^rary of Congress and 

 the Corcoran Gallery, leaving, by an amica})le understanding with the 

 latter establishment, as a loan, a few of the works of art, notably a 

 large picture l)y Healy. 



The old name of the collections was the ""Gallery of Art," a title 

 which seems almost too aml)itious for the present collections of the 

 Institution, though it is to be hoped that this designation will be justi- 

 fied by their future increase. These have been placed b}" me in a room 

 specially fitted up for that purpose (the Art Room), under the tem- 

 porar}^ charge of the librarian. 



THE children's ROOM. 



An educational museum has been elsewhere defined as ''a collection 

 of instructive labels, each illustrated by a well-selected specimen;'' but 

 tliough the first purpose of a museum be for the increase of original 

 knowledge by investigation and research, its second purpose is to 

 entertain as well as to instruct. To some extent the scientific system 

 of classification which requires a Latin name on every natural-history 

 specimen is associated with a treatment on the label which does not 

 principally consider what interests, but what instructs, and makes the 

 collection less entertaining than it might otherwise be to the general 

 public; but this, the customary arrangement, while right and neces- 

 sary for scientific purposes, and the one which must always chiefly 

 prevail, is not that which is most readily '" understanded of the people," 

 almost the only way to whose comprehension lies through a newly 

 awakened interest and attention. It may truthfully be said that not 

 one in twenty persons who enter a museum of natural history does 

 profit in this sense by the intelligence conveyed along with the Latin 

 name, and though our own labels are chiefly in English, and though 

 the wants of this public have already been considered in the National 

 Museum in the collections as now displayed, it might seem to ))e pos- 

 sible to do yet a little more and to place at least in a restricted space 

 specimens which v/ill engage the interest of the majority of the public 

 and especialh" to bring these things within the reach of children. 



Speaking for myself, and I believe for most other students of science, 

 I-may say that each will usuall}^ recognize that his "bent" toward his 

 particular study came to him at a very early period of his life, when 

 something which excited his childish wonder grew to have unaccountable 



