8 PKOCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



be held uot only at home, but abroad, and at the conclusion of such ex- 

 hibitions there is always a large number of objects which could be col- 

 lected without cost. 



It should be remembered that the British Museum, magnificent as it 

 is to-day, is not of so very old a date, and that the choicest portions of its 

 collections have been presented to it. lu the United States the era of 

 collecting has only commenced. Thirty or forty years ago there was 

 not enough wealth or leisure to permit of it. Men w^ho for the sheer love 

 of a thing devote a great deal of money and many years of their lives 

 to the gathering together of the specimens belonging to a subject they 

 have studied, are loth to lose even by death such associations as may 

 have coupled their names with their collections. If such men know 

 that the United States possessed a safe storehouse, where their collec- 

 tions would be forever i^reserved, this National Museum will in time 

 fall heir to a great many objects of intrinsic value. 



Our j^ational Museum, as has been stated before, has but one object 

 in view, and that is of an educational character, and it insists that there 

 is nothing in this world which cannot instruct man, from a spade to a 

 Greek bronze. It intends to undertake object lesson in its most extended 

 manner. It offers no restrictions as to entrance. It even i)roposes, 

 should ever the want become manifest, to open its vast arcades at night 

 and to illuminate all its cases. Such vast conceptions as this museum 

 entertains are not in the least impossible. They are not a step in ad- 

 vance of the times wo live in, but are rather the corollary of our progress. 



In describing as far as construction goes the physical characteristics 

 of this museum, its spacious halls, its innumerable cases, its many work- 

 shops, these details are really secondary to that intangible thing the 

 spirit which is to guide this institution, not only for to-day, but forever. 

 It is, in a certain measure, an offshoot of the Smithsonian, though dis- 

 tinct from it. That small fund which a generous Englishman gave us 

 a half-century ago has, under the management of the late Prof. Henry 

 and the present Secretary, Prof. Spencer F. Baird, resulted in more good 

 than any similar amount of money that ever was left as a bequest. 



Commencing in a modest way, the Smithsonian Institution, founded 

 for active research and the distribution of knowledge among mankind, 

 has been forced to become in a certain way a collector. Its overcrowded 

 rooms to-day show how rapid has been its accumulative power. One 

 of the requisites of research being the ability to make comparisons, it 

 would have been a waste of its powers had the Smithsonian shown any 

 indifference to creating a museum within itself. In studying the earlier 

 legislation directed toward the Smithsonian Institution, in which a 

 variety of plans were proposed, just such a present museum was fore- 

 shadowed. But, most fortunately, there were wise heads at work when the 

 Smithsonian was in its infancy. Such a load as that of a museum would 

 have swamped it in its earlier days. The public men of fifty years ago 

 foresaw that with time a vast museum might be developed; they were 

 too intelligent to exi^ect it to be forthcoming at once. 



