DISCOURSE OF W. B. TAYLOR. 291 



their stages of development. The first publication of "Smithsonian 

 Contributions" comprised in a good sized quarto volume an account 

 of extensive examinations of the mounds and earthworks found 

 over the broad valley of the Mississippi, with elaborate illustrations 

 of the relics and results obtained : and this volume extensively cir- 

 culated by gift and by sale, attracted a wide-spread attention and 

 interest, and gave a remarkable stimulus to the further prosecution 

 of such researches. "Whatever relates to the nature of man is 

 interesting to the students of every branch of knowledge; and 

 hence ethnology affords a common ground on which the cultivators 

 of physical science,- of natural history, of archaeology, of language, 

 of history, and of literature, can all harmoniously labor. Conse- 

 quently no part of the operations of this Institution has been more 

 generally popular than that which relates to this subject."* 



Special explorations inaugurated by the Institution, have sup- 

 plied it with important contributions to archaeological information, 

 and with the rich spoils of collected relics; which together witli 

 much material gathered from Arctic and from Southern regions, 

 from Europe, from Asia, and from Africa, fill now a large museum 

 hall 200 feet long and 50 feet wide, exclusively devoted to compara- 

 tive Anthropology and Ethnology. In 1868, the Secretary reported 

 that " during the past year greater effort had been made than ever 

 before to collect specimens to illustrate the ethnology and archaeology 

 of the North American continent:" and he dwelt upon the impor- 

 tance of the subject as a study connecting all portions of the habitable 

 earth, pointing out that "it embraces not only the natural history 

 and peculiarities of the different races of men as they now exist 

 upon the globe, but also their affiliations, their changes in mental 

 and moral development, and also the question of the geological epoch 

 of the appearance of man upon the earth. - - - The ethnolog- 

 ical specimens we have mentioned are not considered as mere 

 curiosities collected to excite the wonder of the illiterate, but as 

 contributions to the materials from which it will be practicable to 

 reconstruct by analogy and strict deduction, the history of the past 

 in its relation to the present." | 



* Smithsonian Report for 1860, p. 38. 



t Smithsonian Report for 1868, pp. 26 and 33. 



