APPENDIX TO THE SECRETARY'S REPORT. 



Appendix I. 

 REPORT ON tHE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Sir: I have the honor to report as follows regarding the condition and operations 

 of the National Museum during the year ending June 30, 1900: 



Organization and staff. — The organization of the Museum remains the same as 

 during the past two years, comprising, beside the administrative offices, three scien- 

 tific departments — anthropology, biology, and geology, each in charge of a head 

 curator and each composed of several divisions, anthropology having 8, biology 9, 

 and geology 3. There are also 17 minor divisions, known as sections. 



The scientific staff at the close of the year consisted of 3 head curators, 17 curators, 

 13 assistant curators, 15 custodians, 11 aids, 4 associates, and 1 collaborator, a total 

 of 64 persons, but of these only 33 were under jjay from the Museum, the remainder, 

 nearly one-half of the scientific personnel, serving as volunteers or in an honorary 

 capacity. 



The executive office continued in the immediate charge of the Executive Curator, 

 Dr. Frederick W. True, the Assistant Secretary exercising only a general supervision 

 over the work, under the direction of the Secretary, who is the keeper ex officio of 

 the Museum. 



But few changes occurred in connection with the scientific staff. In the death of 

 Mr. Frank Hamilton Gushing on April 10, 1900, the Museum, as well as the Bureau 

 of Ethnology, lost one of its most active and distinguished workers, whose services 

 with the Institution began nearly a quarter of a century ago. Medical Director 

 James M. Flint, U. S. N., under whose charge the Division of Materia Medica was 

 established in 1881, and who has been its Honorary Curator under detail by the 

 Secretary of the Navy for three separate periods, aggregating about thirteen years, was 

 placed on the retired list of the Navy in February, 1900. Proposing to continue his 

 residence in Washington, however. Dr. Flint has volunteered his further s^ervices in 

 the same capacity, and they have been gladly accepted. ISIr. W. R. Maxon was 

 appointed an aid in the Division of Plants in November, 1899. 



Buildings. — The collections, laboratories, and offices are mainly provided for in the 

 Museum and Smithsonian buildings, but the workshops are now housed in separate 

 structures, two on the Smithsonian grounds and three in rented quarters south of B 

 street S.W. A large amount of material still remains in storage in the large sheds on 

 Ninth street and on Armory Square because of the lack of accommodations. 



The need for additional quarters, which was long ago evident, has now become so 

 urgent that unless relief is soon obtained it will be difficult to properly administer 

 the affairs of the Museum or to fulfill its most important function as the custodian of 

 all material objects resulting from Government explorations. Under the conditions 

 as they now exist, some of the most valuable of the collections have to be kept in 

 insecure buildings in the shipping cases in which they w'ere received; they can not 

 be arranged, classified, and made available to investigators as the law provides; the 

 exhibition halls are overcrowded, preventing that enlargement in the disjilay series 

 which the public is led to expect; and the laboratory accommodations are greatly 

 cramped, besides being in most cases very poorly adapted to their purpose. 



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